Supreme Reflections Volume 4
by MarvelMaster616
Summary: A series of short character vignettes that takes place within the pages of X-men Supreme Volume 3: Ashes of Hope. It covers Psylocke, Colossus, General Grimshaw, Polaris, and the Scarlet Witch. See each character reflect on the events of their lives.
1. Elizabeth Braddock

**Supreme Reflections  
Volume 4**

* * *

**AN: This story is the fourth round of short vignettes for some select characters during specific points in Volume 4. If you haven't read Volume 4 yet, I suggest you do because I'll be citing some of the events. Many are simple character musings that should fill in some of the blanks or add some extra depth to the X-men Supreme mythos. Think of these as one-shot specials similar to those that make it onto comic stands once in a while. As such, their contents are in continuity and I'll reference wherever and whenever these scenes take place. Enjoy!**

Disclaimer: I don't own X-men or any of the characters. They are the property of Marvel and Disney. Please don't sue.

_'These mean character thoughts or psychic communication.'_

This indicates a shift to first person.

******As always, I encourage everybody who reads this series to review. Feedback is the driving force that makes X-men Supreme great. I am grateful for the support I've received thus far and I encourage everyone to tell me what they think. Don't be shy! Please post your comments on the website or send me your feedback through the fanfiction website. Thank you and enjoy!**

* * *

**Betsy's Reflections (AN: Takes place shortly after issue 80)**

Elizabeth Braddock closed her eyes and exhaled deeply through a thick layer of steam. She had been lingering in the shower for a good twenty minutes. She had long since finished washing her hair, applying conditioner, and doing her usual morning shower rituals. She had a busy day ahead of her and should have been back in her room, dressed, and on her way to class by now. The old Elizabeth would have been on task and focused, but she wasn't that same girl anymore. She was that girl plus this other girl who she didn't know yet was inescapably tied to her persona.

Eventually, her skin started pruning and she pulled herself together enough to turn off the shower and grab a towel. Her vision remained hazy through the steam as she roughly rubbed the towel over her naked skin, fighting off the strange feeling that this wasn't her body in the process. It was a feeling that hadn't left her since this mess began. The body of Elizabeth Braddock was no more, having been reduced to an unrecognizable heap of burned flesh. The body she was in now belonged to a young Japanese woman named Kwannon. That woman was dead now or at least she was supposed to be.

Once dry, Betsy wrapped the towel around her body and navigated through the thick steam towards the mirror. Using her hand, she wiped away the condensation to reveal a face that still looked like a stranger to her. She was Elizabeth Braddock in the body of Kwannon Tsurayaba. To say she was facing an identity crisis would be an understatement of epic proportions.

"My name is Elizabeth Braddock. My name is Elizabeth Braddock," she said distantly into the mirror.

_Bloody hell, I sound like I belong in a padded cell. How many perfectly sane people have to remind themselves who they're looking at every time they come close to a mirror? I still don't know how sane I am. I don't even know if my mind is completely intact. I can still function normally. I can eat, sleep, think, and reason as well as any young 19-year-old college student…or a 22 year old soldier for White Cell. I'm not sure which applies more. Sure makes planning my birthday a real bitch._

_This shouldn't be so damn hard! It's not like I switched bodies with a five-year-old boy or a 65-year-old woman. I switched bodies with a skilled Japanese woman with the fighting skills of a ninja and some nifty mutant powers on top of it. It's not an ugly body either. Kwannon kept in great shape. I could probably go back to my old modeling gigs no questions asked. Being a hot Asian girl still carries some unpleasant stereotypes I'd rather not encounter, but it could be a whole lot worse. So why can't I get over it? Why can't I accept that this is who I am now?_

_It's a lot easier said than done. I'm usually so good at gritting my teeth and moving forward with my life, but there's no motivational pep talk that prepares you for this. I'm looking at a girl in the mirror and it's not entirely me. I still feel like Betsy. I still act like her in most respects. But part of me still feels like Kwannon as well. Sometimes I have these thoughts and feelings that are completely alien to me. I wonder if maybe this is some lingering essence of a girl whose suppose to be dead. Maybe she isn't dead and a part of her is still locked in my mind, waiting for a chance to get out._

_It better not set the stage for a turf war in this body. I'm not sure I have the energy for a battle like that. It's hard enough just being Betsy. I don't want to imagine how hard it would be going back and forth between two completely different minds. That's the kind of crazy that deserves to be locked up and not entrusted with the responsibilities of an X-man._

The young woman turned away from the mirror, working hard to shut out all those awkward feelings of being a mind trapped in an unfamiliar body. She busied herself by brushing her long purple hair. One of the only features that stayed consistent from her old body to her new body was her hair length. She and Kwannon liked to keep the same shoulder-length hair. Even though hers was purple, a side-effect of her psionic blade powers according to Professor Xavier, it still felt like the hair she always had. That one feature was a rare similarity that offered a tiny bit of stability in a situation that had so little to begin with.

_I used to never have to worry about being overwhelmed like this. One of my strengths had always been a strong and focused mind. That's not just because of my telepathic talents either. That's been one of my most defining traits since I was a little girl growing up in another body._

_I developed this and other talents throughout my early life in Essex, England. I came from a family that already valued a level head. My parents were both active in high level law enforcement and my older brother, Brian Braddock, acted like a cop most of the time so we were all well-versed in the law and order. My mother was a top barrister in Western Europe. She specialized in international courts weeding through the thick stacks of laws and regulations each country scribbled onto any old slip of paper. My father was a respected officer at Interpol who specialized in Asian crime syndicates. He was regarded as one of the top detectives in the agency and I always looked up to him for solving the mysteries that few others wanted to solve._

_My father was a hero in a ways that didn't require superpowers or fancy costumes. He made a difference using only his mind. As a little girl I would watch these old crime movies with him and he would point out all the clues and connections before the main character had his first clue. I know it's easy to impress young children with damn near everything, but this left a hell of an impression. Instead of playing cops and robbers with my brother, I played detective._

_It started off with puzzles. Boy did I drown hours on end with puzzles. From word searches to crossword puzzles, mazes, computer games, and rubix cubs I devoured every one I could get my hands on. My father taught me all the tricks of the trade. Every time I thought I was finished, he would encourage me to find the next step. There was always another step it seemed and sometimes it went beyond just solving the puzzle. He encouraged me to look at how I was solving it. What tools could I use to get the answer I was looking for? I didn't have much to work with besides my own brain. I didn't find out until years later that my brain had much more to offer._

_My puzzle phase lasted until I was about eleven-years-old. My parents were worried that I was becoming too much of a recluse. By this time my brother was a teenager already training as a junior cadet in a British military academy. He was going to be a real soldier for the crown and he had plenty of people looking out for him. I didn't have anywhere near that kind of support. I had practically no friends and I didn't know too many kids that shared my interest. Every day after school I would go straight up to my room and work on puzzles. Socially, that was very healthy. Being the stubborn little bloke that I was, I didn't see much reason to put myself out there. It took a jolt of tragedy to get me out of my shell._

_One day my mother returned from a trip to Hong Kong feeling ill. My father and I thought it was just jet lag or the flu. Then the vomiting and fainting started. Overnight she became pale as a ghost and weak as a 98-year-old cripple. Something was terribly wrong so my father rushed her to the hospital. _

_There she was diagnosed with this rare form of tropical flu. It was native only to Southeast Asia and potentially lethal. They assumed she got it from her extensive travels to that area. My father suspected something more sinister at work. My mother had been working on this case against a team of Asian crime lords with ties to these Yakuza clans in Japan. While she and my father were used to catching heat from these guys, they were always careful and well-prepared. That didn't mean they were untouchable. One rule of the criminal underworld is that no one is untouchable._

_If my mother really was poisoned, there were no clues to follow. There was no evidence of foul play. Even someone as brilliant as my father couldn't figure it out. He had to watch helplessly as my mother suffered for nearly three weeks in a hospital bed before slipping into a coma and dying. For me and Brian, it was pretty bloody devastating. It still haunts me to this day. _

_That would make a lot of sense if it didn't feel so strange now because I'm in a body that she didn't give birth to. Does that still make her my mother? The hell if I know. What's even worse is this story of my life has to compete with the story of Kwannon's._

Betsy started brushing her hair a little rougher. Frustration kept finding ways to overwhelm her, even when she was trying to relax. Looking down at her purple hair, she once again clashed with the same inner conflict. She still thought of herself as Elizabeth Braddock, but Kwannon was now part of her identity. It wasn't something she could shake off. She had been trying endlessly and it was becoming increasingly apparent that there was nothing she could do to escape the truth. The story of Kwannon's life was now the story of her life as well.

_She may be dead, but I still have a healthy dose of Kwannon's memories. I remember her being a little girl in this body. She was a lot like me in the sense that she was a daddy's girl. Her father, who also happened to be my godfather, was also in law enforcement. Matsu'o __Tsurayaba was a legend within the Asian authorities. He had a reputation for hitting organized crime and hitting them hard. He was also a close friend of my father. They had been working together since before Brian and I were born so it wasn't too much a stretch to make him my godfather._

_Now that puts me in an even more awkward position because I love for my uncle as any goddaughter would, but now that love is mixing with the genuine daughterly love that Kwannon had. She was a lot more animated about it as well. She didn't want to just solve crimes. She wanted to fight them. Her mother's death also caused a turning point for her. Just like my mother, she was a victim of the very crime syndicates her father was fighting against. Someone from an angry Yakuza clan literally executed her in front of her eyes. It's tragic and bloody annoying at the same time because I didn't even know the woman and I'm still getting worked up just thinking about her._

_Kwannon and I both took the loss of our respective mothers and took our lives in a new direction. She started training with all the best trainers in Japan, most of which owed __Matsu'o at least several dozen favors. She learned every style of fighting she could from kung fu to taekwondo and jujitsu. She conditioned herself body to be in top form against anybody who got in her way. When her powers manifested, she made each style her own. That's how she became the skilled little ninja she is…or was. Bloody hell, I've got to start getting my tenses right!_

_I actually remember all the training she went through. It was way more physically demanding than the training I got after my mother passed away. I went to this little private school to get a leg up on my studies. Spending days on end with puzzles hadn't made me a straight-A student. I needed something to give me an edge and the woman that ran this school was a friend of my mothers so she pulled some strings to get me a scholarship. What made this school important was that it had this junior criminology program that I quickly immersed myself into. That's where I wanted to focus my efforts. I wanted to be in law enforcement like my father._

_Thanks to my father's influence, I excelled. By the time I was 17 I was certified to enter and analyze crime scenes, albeit on a limited basis. I could actually get first-hand experience with real conflict. Some of it was not for the weak of heart. It meant being in close proximity with some grotesque sights and various human entrails. It also meant getting close to real criminals, many of whom had no problem doing all sorts of disgusting things to a cute teenage girl. I refused to be afraid of them. I realized that if I was going to be in this business I had to be brave like my father and confront the people behind the crimes. It seems only fitting that doing so awaken my latent mutant powers._

_It seemed like an ordinary enough case. My father thought it was perfectly safe to let me tag along. We went to his office at Interpol where they had this suspected money launderer from Spain. He wasn't all that imposing. He looked more like a shoe salesman than a businessman. There was some scant evidence that he was wiring money through fake business investments for the Yakuza Clans. None of it would hold up in court and it looked like he was going to have to be released. That didn't stop my father from having a little chat with him. He let me watch over him since the man seemed about as dangerous as a butter knife. I had been dealing with what I thought were just migraines for the past few days and I was trying to tough it out so I could gain some quality experience. I ended up gaining a lot more than that._

_The interrogation was pretty uneventful. My father went through his routine, going through his list of questions and putting on his most intimidating demeanor. The bloke didn't even budge. Hell, he actually smiled a few times. He said all the right things in all the right ways. If he was hiding something, he was doing a damn good job. My father was getting frustrated. He had been a little ill himself lately. He was going through the last round of question when I started hearing these voices. At first I thought it was just a side-effect of my migraine, but when I started listening to the voices I realized something amazing. Those voices weren't voices. They were thoughts._

_This bloke was such a tosser he was practically screaming with his mind that he was lying to the face of an Interpol agent. He got a sick thrill out of deceiving the people meant to catch him. He knew every trick in the book except how to guard his thoughts. I started hearing things like Yashida and Jack Lee Fund. Just as my father was about to let him go, I jumped in._

"_This asshole is lying! He's near the top of the Yakuza's payroll!"_

_It was probably not the smartest thing to yell out loud. My father was just as surprised as the man. They looked at me like I had gone mental or something. The man laughed at me while my father tried to get me out of the room. Then I picked up on more thoughts. I heard these combinations of numbers and the name of a few banks. Before I was forced out, I blurted out the name Yashida and Fenris. That got a hell of a reaction from the man. He went from calm to full blown rage in less than five second._

_I forget how many obscenities he spat out over the course of the next five minutes, but I'm pretty sure it would get him fined in America. He tried to come after me, thinking I was some sort of trap set by the Yakuza. It was flattering even if it was overwhelming. First I watched my father and a bunch of armed officers restrained him. Then I watched my father and his people check the information I heard. It was just what they needed. Sure enough the Jack Lee fund was a secret trust from the Yashida crime family that was run and managed by our distinguished guest. The numbers I got from his mind were the encrypted passkey. It was a huge if not ridiculously lucky break in the case._

_While my father and his friends at Interpol were ecstatic, I was bloody confused. My father silently took me to the Interpol clinic where his private doctor ran a few tests. That's when I got my answer. I was a mutant and my powers involved telepathy. I probably shouldn't have been too surprised. I honestly didn't know what to do with this information, but my father saw the potential in it before I did. _

_He sat me down and told me that I had a special gift. Being able to read peoples' thoughts was a skill that could make me more than just an ordinary crime buff. It could make me an extra detective, capable of solving and preventing crime that would have otherwise gone unheeded. When I thought of it in this way the shock quickly wore off. Now I had an edge to really make a difference in the world. My father often lamented how he was limited to the tools he had available. Now I had something special to work with and I was going to put it to good use. It was probably the best piece of advice my father ever gave me. It was also the last._

A wave of sorrow washed over Betsy's inherent confusion. She had to stop brushing her hair so she could wipe the tears from her eyes. Even after going through the trauma of switching bodies, she still felt the same sadness whenever her father found his way into her thoughts. Losing her mother had been hard enough. Losing her father affected her in many different ways, some of which wouldn't become clearer until much later in life.

_While I was struggling with my new powers, my father was struggling with a heart condition he had been keeping secret. This time there was no mystery or foul play from his many enemies. This was just a man's health catching up to him. About a month after my powers manifested, he checked himself into a hospital. Two weeks later he suffered a stroke and fell into a coma. Three days later, he died. _

_It was a difficult time for me in a lot of ways. I remember being with him during those last few moments and I distinctly recall a few stray thoughts he projected. He had few regrets in his life. He was proud of everything he accomplished. The only thing that he really struggled with was preventing crimes before they happened. He could solve all the murder mysteries in the world. That didn't mean those murders were undone. It was a painfully noble mindset for a man with a damn near impossible job. It left me more determined than ever to follow his example._

_After my father was buried, I spent some time with my brother, Brian. I was less than shocked to find out he was a mutant too. His powers involved drawing this weird energy that gave him the power to project force and enhance his strength. I don't know the science behind it, but it explained why he was kicked out of the royal military and relegated to doing legal work. It wasn't his cup of tea, but it did give him time to teach me the ins and outs of being a mutant. He also gave me some good legal advice in that he said to keep my powers secret. The human/mutant conflict was becoming pretty mainstream at the time and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt my chances at a career in crime-fighting._

_Once I got a handle on my telepathy, I resumed my studies. This is where my uncle Matsu'o __Tsurayaba came in again. Since he and my father had been such close friends, he took it upon himself to look after me so that I had at least one parental figure in my life. I'm glad he was there because I needed him while I graduated from my cozy little private school and entered the criminology program at Essex University._

_What I didn't know a the time was that __Matsu'o __Tsurayaba had another reason for spending time with me and Brian. He was feeling somewhat empty after his daughter, Kwannon, left to use her new fighting skills on a bigger stage. Her mutant powers had manifested a while back and unlike me, it didn't take a tragedy either. During some of the rediculously intense training she seemed have a hard-on for, her psionic blades manifested to help her defeat her trainers. There was no confusion on her part. She saw these powers as a means of becoming even stronger. However, they came at a price._

_Kwannon's main goal was to join Japanese or Asian authorities. She had become motivated beyond just being an officer like her father. She wanted to be a full blown warrior. But being a mutant made that pretty much impossible. Pretty much every country in the world is bound by international law to not use mutants in their armed forces. That meant it didn't matter how skilled Kwannon was. No army would allow her to join._

_This left her understandably pissed. __Matsu'o __Tsurayaba encouraged her to seek other career paths like becoming an officer or starting her own dojo. That lead to a string of arguments that ended with Kwannon storming out and joining this private security force called White Cell. Since they were private, they allowed and often embraced mutants into their ranks. Matsu'o was dead set against it, but Kwannon was a legal adult now. She could do whatever the hell she wanted and she wanted to be part of something where she could put her fighting skills to good use. She sure got plenty with White Cell and her father was left feeling pretty lousy._

_It was a family drama I had no knowledge of nor cared to get caught up in. I never asked my uncle about why he was so reserved about the issue and he never talked about it. By all accounts I had no way of possibly knowing that this little father/daughter spat was going to affect me in the biggest, not to mention bizzare, kind of way._

Betsy stopped brushing her hair and leaned over the sink. Her frustration continued to fester. She tried splashing cold water on her face, rubbing her throbbing temples for a bit in the process. It was useless to get angry over something she had absolutely no control over. No matter which way she looked at it, she had no way of knowing that something like this was going to happen to her.

With water still dripping from her face, Betsy's gaze narrowed in on her reflection in the mirror. In it she still saw the face of Kwannon, not Elizabeth Braddock. It was hard to blame her because she had no control over this either. The conflict that led her mind to take over Kwannon's body was the result of a man they both trusted and some Yakuza thugs they didn't even know.

_It all started coming together before Kwannon and I had the faintest idea of what was going on. While I was busy in college, she was off doing her job with White Cell. It was a dangerous job that brought her into some pretty rough war zones, but she thrived on it. She held her own even among those stronger and more experienced than her. I even have some faint memories of a few romantic flings. She had a much more exciting personal life than me. I only had a handful of love interests while I was in school and none of them were particularly serious. I don't know how serious Kwannon's flings were. I only know they came to an end when she was gravely injured on the job and left in a deep coma._

_It happened during Magneto's crazy extinction plot with that killer asteroid of his. White Cell was commissioned to control riots in the cities and she had the misfortune of enduring severe head trauma in the field. By the time the conflict was over and she made it to a hospital, the damage had been done. Her brain was scarred and her mind was essentially gone. When __Matsu'o __Tsurayaba found out I'm pretty sure he was devastated. I remember because just up and left for Japan without giving me any reason. He also stopped returning my phone calls and emails. I didn't think anything of it. He was my godfather. I had no reason not to trust him._

_So when he called me months later under the guise of helping him with a case, I didn't think much of it. Hell, I saw it as an opportunity to get some real-life experience in the arena of big time crime fighting. I had been doing pretty well in school and I had yet to really use my telepathy to solve a mystery. This seemed as good a time as any. What should have been a free trip to Japan quickly turned into a nightmare because what my dear uncle did that day completely messed my life up forever._

_I get that the man loved his daughter. I get that parents will go to any length to save the life of their child. What I don't get is how a man as smart as __Matsu'o __Tsurayaba could be so bloody stupid in trusting the Yashida Yakuza Clan! This man spent a lifetime fighting these blokes. Now he turns to them for help? Just because his daughter is in a coma doesn't mean his fucking brain has to shut off._

_Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on the man, but he should have known better. There was no way Harada Yashida was going to give him what he wanted. That bloke was going to screw him over one way or another. By dragging me into this mess, he was going to make sure I got screwed over as well. He was willing to sacrifice his niece to save his daughter. That either makes him the world's greatest father or the world's worst uncle._

_I didn't figure it out until it was too late. By the time I realized my uncle had taken advantage of my trust, I was abducted, gagged, and thrown into a bio tank for some bullocks Yakuza science experiment. Even though the X-men showed up with Deatstrike to stop these assholes, there was no way this mess was going to end well. I don't know the exact science behind what happened nor do I care to know. All I remember was feeling like my head was floating off my shoulders and then in an instant, it was shoved right back down only it did not land on the same body._

_It was probably the most disorienting experience ever recorded. No drunk, drug addict, or schitzo could ever match what happens when you move from one body to another. I can't even put it into thoughts let alone words. All I can say was it left me dazed and confused on a whole new level. The strangest part is that when I awoke I didn't even know I was in a new body at first. I just knew something was off._

_The first person I saw was Remy Lebeau of the X-men. While I was getting my head and body on straight, he and the X-men were taking care of the Yakuza. It was a good thing too because I was in no condition to be of any help. The only person I wanted to confront was my darling uncle/father. There were so many ways I could have told him to sod off for putting me and Kwannon through this, but the bloke had to complicate everything by being heroic at the last minute._

_He turned on the Yashidas and helped save me. He also managed to mortally wound himself in the process. By the time I did reach him he was on his last breath. He reached out to me and to Kwannon, saying how sorry he was and how much he loved me…or us if I want to be technical. I wanted to hate the man. It should have been easy because he was my uncle and he betrayed my trust, not to mention my father's. But I guess some part of Kwannon lingered because I still felt the love she had for him and that made it bloody impossible to be very cold-hearted._

_Whatever emotions I was feeling, I still held the man as he drew his last breath. I sensed in his thoughts how sad he was to have failed his niece and his daughter. I also sensed what drove him to do what he did and even now I find it hard to completely hate his guts. Even so, what he did has turned my life upside down, inside out, and eveything else in between. Everything from here on out is part of a rebuilding phase and much of that proces is taking place right here with the X-men._

Betsy closed her eyes and turned away from the mirror. There was no use getting upset over it anymore. What's done is done. Her old body was gone and she was stuck in this new body for the foreseeable future. She couldn't go back to her old life so she had to build a new one. Not only would she have to find a new way to accomplish her goals, she would have to contend with this conflicted identity. She was Elizabeth Braddocks mind in Kwannon Tsurayaba's body and was going to make the most of it.

In a ways she was lucky because her mind and Kwannon's body was just the kind of combination that fit into the X-men. Since arriving Professor Charles Xavier didn't just talk about straightening out her mind or learning how to use her new psionic blade powers. He talked about her taking an active role in the X-men. It was a different kind of life with a different set of goals. Yet in a weird way, a part of her embraced it and so did part of Kwannon.

_I suppose I should feel a tad lucky. The Xavier Institute is probably the only place in the world where a girl whose mind got stuck in someone else's body would fit in. Charles Xavier is a candidate for sainthood in my book. I hate to think of where I would be if I didn't have his help. It was hard enough getting in touch with Brian, who I still haven't seen face-to-face since this mess went down. Moreover, this new home and this new body give me a chance to do something great with my life._

_I still remember my father's biggest regrets. He wasn't haunted by the mysteries he didn't solve as much as he was the mysteries he didn't prevent. There's a lot more going on in this world than petty crime and mutants are at the center of it all. There are some pretty nasty blokes out there looking to start a war between humans and mutants and it doesn't take a detective to figure out that a war like that isn't going to have any winners. So with the mind of Elizabeth Braddock and the body of Kwannon Tsurayaba I'm going to do whatever it takes to stop that war._

_I've already started working my way into the X-men way of life. I wake up, I train, I study, and I go on missions. I haven't faced my first real test yet, but it's only a matter of time. Along the way I'm still keeping up with my criminology studies. It stands to reason that the same blokes who commit crimes will be the blokes who cause wars. By being a detective and a telepath, I can stay a step ahead of them. Having Kwannon's ninja skills and psionic blades allow me to fight back if the mystery turns into a conflict. It's a perfect combination even if I haven't gotten the hang of it yet._

_I'm still struggling to keep my own thoughts in line while filtering out the lingering thoughts of Kwannon. I know for a fact I still have some of her tastes. A year ago you couldn't get me to even look at sushi. Now I gobble the stuff down like it's chocolate. I also never cared for Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies. Now I'm in the process of collecting every one of them. I also get the sense that Kwannon was a lot more reserved with her emotions. She only let them out when she really had to. That has never been my style and now I find myself holding back in ways I never used to…especially around Remy Lebeau._

_But that's another conflict that's a good ten spots lower on my to-do list. Right now I need to focus on pulling myself together. I can't keep fighting this inner battle between Elizabeth and Kwannon. I have to be one person. Otherwise when my first real fight as an X-man comes along, I won't stand a chance. _

_Whatever lingering pieces of Kwannon I still have floating around, I need to cope with them. Whatever personal issues I'm dealing with, I need to lay them to rest. The person I see in the mirror can't keep being a stranger to me. This is who I am now. I'm not just a confused British girl in the body of an Asian ninja/soldier. I'm Psylocke, a member of the X-men and an active participant in the human/mutant conflict. My father and my uncle both told me I was destined for great things in my life. Well this is it. This is my new destiny. Body or no body, I'm going to see it through._

Betsy took deep, calming breaths. Her demeanor eased and her poise strengthened. Looking in the mirror was still a novel sensation. That novelty was sure to wear off sooner or later. She had to keep fighting if it was going to be sooner. She had a great many reasons to keep enduring.

Just as she was getting a hold of herself, there was a frantic knock on the door.

"Betsy! Did you drown in there or something?! It's been a half-hour and other people need to use this bathroom too!" yelled the impatient voice of Kitty Pryde.

Shaken from her daze, Betsy collected herself and gathered up her belongings. It was way too easy to lose track of time when wrestling with an identity crisis.

"Don't bother phasing yourself through in anger. I'm finished, luv," said Betsy.

"You better be! If I get an extra danger room session for being late I'm blaming you!"

Betsy rolled her eyes and prepared to leave. Before she stepped out, she took one last look at the mirror. The girl she saw was still unfamiliar, but she was quickly growing on her. She actually smiled for the first time at this exotic figure. There was so much potential for Elizabeth Braddock in this new life. So much of it was still a mystery. That could only play to her advantage because she loved a good mystery.

* * *

**Up next: Piotr Rasputin**


	2. Piotr Rasputin

**Supreme Reflections  
Piotr Rasputin  
**

* * *

**Piotr's Reflections (AN: Takes place after issue 90)**

_Russians are famous for their tolerance of cold. It is a fame that is well-deserved. In Russia a temperature just a few degrees above zero is considered a heat wave. In that kind of weather men are out farming the fields or working the factories. They deal with frostbite the way most people deal with hangnails, but it isn't just the weather that earns Russians their reputation. _

_In many circles being cold as a person is seen as a strength. The willingness to do anything that must be done regardless of what emotion or ethics tell you is admired and respected. While that may seem preferable in some circles, it is nothing to be proud of. I should know. I once walked those circles. I once bore that reputation. That is why they called me Colossus. I was this big, unwavering statue that always had the same look on his face. It may have earned me respect and praise from some, but I hated myself for being like that. I still hate myself for I let it do to me and those I cared about._

Piotr Rasputin, a newcomer to the Xavier Institute and the Western world in general, had a lot of old habits he needed to break. For the first time in his life, he had the opportunity to do all the right things for all the right reasons. He had been a slave to his circumstances for far too long. He had a long list of regrets and a great many sins he had to make up for. The oversized Russian was still in a particular mindset and breaking free from it was not easy by any measure.

Piotr had only a handful of coping skills when it came to dealing with this conflict. The one he practiced most was working out. He found that doing heavy lifting was a great way to slow his mind down. It forced him to focus on something other than his long line of mistakes and missteps. That was why he was so relieved to find out that the Xavier Institute had a fully stocked weight room complete with extra heavy weights for someone of his strength.

It was early in the morning. The sun hadn't even come up yet and Piotr was restless. So without even changing out of his sleeping attire, he ventured down to the lower levels so he could work out. He was already working on his fifth set with the special bar-bells that Rogue used to match her strength. He had been pushing himself hard, utilizing his full metal form to maximize his workout. The burn from his efforts helped settle his restless mind if only to a point.

_I've had a remarkable stroke of luck, crossing paths with the X-men and finding a place at their Xavier Institute. It's not the first bit of luck I've had, but it is the first time I've taken advantage of it in the right kind of way. For too long, I've been granted opportunities and made the wrong decision even if it was for the right reasons._

_Few blame me for such shortcomings because where I come from such opportunities are rare if not non-existent. There aren't a lot of chances when you're born on a failing farm in Siberia. There's a reason why Stalin sent his enemies to this barren part of the world. It's remote, isolated, and utterly confined. Who wouldn't want to leave for the promise of a better life? That doesn't make me feel any better about what I did. It just shows how rotten my luck was early on in my life._

_My parents are the descendants of poor Russian peasants and low ranking communist officials from the Stalin era. My grandfather used to oversee slave labor in coal mines and my father was able to take the funds from his efforts to be part of a large collective farm in the area. He and my mother lived a pretty simple life, working the fields and producing for the motherland. All that changed when the Soviet Union collapsed. It brought all sorts of chaos to the region and I was born into that chaos._

_As a boy, I had no concept of the kind of political and social upheaval that was going on. Siberia is one of those regions in Russia that never fully stabilized. Once the collective farms were broken up, my father was able to acquire the land and make it his own. However, his hold on the land was tenuous. It seemed he spent half his time working the fields and the other half trying to keep his home intact. It took a toll on him and my mother. We always had to have a bottle of vodka in the house otherwise nothing would get done._

_I did what I was expected to do. I stayed reserved and did the work I was told to do. The work was almost a reprieve of sorts because it was difficult to corrupt with conflict. Thus began my reputation as being the Colossus embodying a cold, hardened Russian. Then my sister was born and a much of that changed._

_Illyana Rasputin was the light of my world. While my parents were always stressed about the fragile nature of their lives, Illyana was a beacon of hope. She was always smiling, carrying with her a love and an innocence that could warm even the hardest of hearts. It certainly warmed mine. She made me laugh, smile, and everything in between while we were children. As such I was quite protective of her. She now claims I was excessively protective, but how could I not be? Her loving innocence was so precious and there was nothing I wouldn't do to protect it._

_Thus started a trend of me being willing to compromise for the sake of my family. By the time I was a teenager, the situation with our farm was so grim it looked like we were going to lose everything. My father was in a drunken stupor half the time and my mother was so depressed she struggled to get out of bed at times. My older brother, Mikhail, tried to help out by joining the Russian Army. That did little, only buying the family some more time. I'm not sure what happened to Mikail because he seemed to be busy with his own affairs. His family was not a priority to him. I couldn't wait for him. We needed money and since I was able-bodied, I went to work in the coal mines. _

_For a sixteen-year-old boy that is not an easy job, but I had to do it. I couldn't allow my family to suffer. It was exceedingly dangerous. Russian mines are not known for their safety or their sophistication. For twelve hours at a time, I would chip away at endless mounds of rock in order to fill carts that had to be pushed up through endless shafts. The threat of cave ins was always there. I tried not to think about it. I thought only of making enough money to support my family._

_Then I was granted my first opportunity. It came in the form of an accident that all miners fear every hour of every day that they work. One minute I was hammering away at an outcropping of coal. The next minute there was this terrible rumbling sound. It was as if hell itself was coming to claim us. All the lanterns went out. Every man who was close by began to yell out in terror. The tunnel was caving in and I was at ground zero._

_I tried to stay calm and make my way to the elevator shaft. I didn't even make it halfway. The entire tunnel completely collapsed, crushing me along with over a dozen of my fellow workers. They were killed almost instantly. For me, however, my life took a most unexpected turn._

The Russian let out a powerful grunt upon completing his latest set. Once he finished the last rep, he let the heavy bar bell fall to the floor. It hit with a loud thud, leaving a deep impression on the matted floor. It showed how heavy these weights were and how much strength it took to handle them. Even an overly fit human could not hope to even budge such a mass. For Piotr Rasputin, who by no means was an ordinary human, the strength required to lift such weight came easy. In his metal form he had the power and invulnerability of a true Colossus. It was a power that first manifested itself in what could have been his final moments.

_For three whole days, the mine came to a near stand-still. Families of the missing workers gathered outside to hope and pray for their loved ones. Among them were my parents and sister. I imagine they were just as distraught as everyone else. The news they were getting was not promising. Miracles in a Russian coal mine are very difficult to come by. There was next to no hope of anyone making it out of that tunnel._

_Then on the third day, every miner and family on the site witnessed something nobody expected. From the very ground they were standing on, a crack formed and a man came bursting through. That man was no ordinary man. That man wasn't even a man just yet. He was a boy…a boy with metal skin and great strength. That boy was me._

_I should have been crushed, buried with the rest of my comrades. But I was saved at the last moment by a talent I did not know I had. Just as the rocks came crashing down upon me, my mutant powers manifested. My skin turned metal and I was spared from the fate of the other miners. When it first happened I was in complete shock. I had no idea what was going on. I wasn't even sure if I was still alive. I must have been stuck in that state for hours before I began to understand what was going on. I did not have time to make sense of it. As far as I was concerned it was a miracle and I wasn't going to waste it. So with my newfound strength and invulnerability, I started punching my way through the hard rock and towards the surface._

_There was little time for rest. There was even less time for fear. With no food or water, I had to escape. Inch by inch I clawed my way to the surface. It took me three days, but I finally made it. Once I emerged, I was greeted with many shocked and horrified faces. The only one who reacted in a positive manner was Illyana. She realized it was me before anyone else and she came running up to me, crying tears of joy. When she hugged me, it finally started sinking in. I returned to my natural form and I embraced her as well._

_It took a bit longer for everybody else to make sense of what happened. Almost instantly my reputation as a Colossus was now more than just a nickname. The people looked at me as if I was a monster. Knowledge of mutants had not reached this remote part of Siberia as it had the rest of the world. While I was alive and well, my world would never be the same. What should have been a triumph quickly became a new nightmare._

Piotr looked down at his metal skin. His stoic expression remained constant with a countless range of emotions raging just beneath the surface. This power that made him so strong and durable had saved his life. At the same time it made his world infinitely more complicated. Had he perished in that mine, it would have made everything a lot easier. It would have also been very harsh on Illyana. She was still his world and after his powers manifested, his dedication to her took on a new level of importance.

_I foolishly tried to go back to the life I had. Even a Russian farm boy should be smart enough to realize that nothing could be the same again. When I returned to the mine I was looked upon with fear and hatred. They didn't know what I was so they wanted nothing to do with me. For a while the mine operators allowed me to work because my durability and strength proved useful. They soon had to let me go because of pressure and fear from the other workers. You know your life has reached a low point when you are fired from a Russian coal mine. With that job, I lost the only means I had to keep my family farm afloat._

_As if losing my job wasn't enough, my father's drinking finally caught up with him. He contracted liver disease and became seriously ill. My mother soon followed him, her excessive smoking habit taking a toll as well. A few days after we lost the farm, my father died in his sleep. Two weeks later, my mother died as well. It left only me to care for Illyana. She was quite hurt by the loss of our parents and I took it upon myself to make sure she would be able to smile again._

_Since there was nothing left for us in Siberia, I took Illyana and moved to Volgograd where Mikail was stationed. When I caught up with him he was a different man. He seemed…disconnected. He looked at least fifteen years older than his real age and he was in a questionable state of mind. I did not ask too many questions. I only asked for his help and he gave it to me. He was now a low ranking Colonel who spent most of his time behind a desk on a military base drinking vodka and filling out paperwork. His pay was not exceptionally great, but it was enough to put a roof over Illyana's head and keep food on her plate._

_But I wanted more for her. She was still so distant after the loss of our parents. She deserved better in life and I wanted to give it to her. Since Mikail clearly wasn't going to do so, I took it upon myself to make enough money to send her to school. Hopefully one day, she could leave this destitute life and make something of herself. Unfortunately, work was hard to come by in post-Communist Russia. It still is to this day. Even if you are lucky enough to find work, the pay is low and the conditions are terrible. The best I could find was a job in a factory making machine parts. Since nobody here knew I was a mutant, I was able to get back to a simpler life. I thought I would be able to hide what I am and live a quiet life with my sister. Once again, I set a new standard for foolishness with such fanciful thinking._

Piotr took a deep breath and retracted his metal skin. Now in his normal fleshly tone, he looked like a normal young man. He gazed over towards one of the many mirrors surrounding the weight room and saw his sweaty form. While his appearance changed, his expression did not. That hardened look that so defined him lingered. It was the only look he could manage when he was angry or frustrated. This was how he was conditioned. It was nothing to be proud of, but it was difficult to escape. In a harsh environment where the slightest weakness could lead to utter destruction, he couldn't help but be stern and stoic even when frustration overwhelmed him.

_Work in the factory was hard and tedious. It did not help that the pay was just as bad as the coal mine. It's easy to get frustrated with that kind of work. You start questioning your worth. To put so much sweat into a task and see little come of it tests even the strongest of souls. Being frustrated and desperate, it was not easy keeping to myself. Sooner or later, my true form would come out._

_It finally happened when I was 18. I was working a heavy machine press, which even for a seasoned worker is a dangerous task. I was being hounded by the factory manager as well. He was upset with everybody because we had fallen behind in our production. He was running us hard and I tried to keep up. I went so fast I got my arm caught in the press. As soon as this happened, I reverted to my metal skin. Just as it had with the mine, it shocked everyone around me and silenced the manager. But it wasn't so much my metal skin that surprised him. It was the fact that in doing so, I broke the press._

_The man was enraged. His anger usurped his surprise and despite my appearance, he stormed towards me and started yelling every kind of Russian obscenity. He told me how this machine was worth more than ten men of my strength and how I will be working this debt off for the next decade. I held my ground at first. Then he had to throw in that if I did not work off this debt, he would come after my family. That was a mistake both for him and for me because I reacted strongly. I grabbed the man by the neck, held him up as if he were light as a feathered pillow, and squeezed him to the point where his face turned blue. I told him that I did not care who he was or how much power he thought he had. If he threatened my family, he would have to go through me._

_Once I got this message across, I let him go. The men around me were now even more fearful. I was a monster once more and there was nothing I could do about it. I scorned myself to no end as I walked out of that factory for the last time. I thought I was done for. Now Illyana and I lost what little support we had left. I failed her and I was ashamed. At that point I was praying for a miracle. I would have accepted anything at that point to help me and my sister. That's a dangerous state of mind to be in because there are always those who would take advantage of you. I was no exception._

_As it turns out, that factory manager had been paying protection money to a Russian mafia family. One of their collectors had been in the factory at the time, picking up his monthly payment. When he saw me, he was probably the only one who wasn't scared. Where most everyone else saw a monster, this man saw an opportunity. _

_Before the factory was even out of my sight, he came running up to me. He presented himself as a recruiter and a collector for the Rossovich family, one of the most feared and respected families in the Russian mob. He said he could get me a job. Whereas most would know better than to work for the Russian Mafia, he threw money into the mix…a lot of money. He claimed I could make thousands if not more by using the skills I had just demonstrated with the manager. I was skeptical, but for Illyana's sake I listened. For her, I was willing to make a deal with the devil himself._

Piotr held his head low, his stern demeanor finally faltering. There was no shame in confronting one's own mistakes. It was easy for anyone of even menial strength to confront the small mistakes. It was much harder to confront those that were so egregious that even a man of his stature would falter in their wake. One mistake would lead to others and with each wrong move, he ventured further down a dark and dangerous path. It was a path that came very close to consuming him.

_I met that devil the next day. As soon as I dropped Illyana off at school, the recruiter met me in a very nice German made car. He then drove me two hours outside the city until we reached a very nice and very ominous looking estate surrounded by gates and men armed with AK-47s. It looked like a mansion and a fortress. Me being a mere 18-year-old boy, I was quite unnerved. However, I could not afford to show any weakness. The Russian Mob was notorious in how it dealt with weakness. I was not going to be another victim. I couldn't. Illyana needed me._

_Once we arrived, the man led me past what had to be at least fifteen armed men into the heart of this mansion. It was quite fancy, full of art and jewels the likes of which a Russian peasant can only dream about. There was also something very dark about this environment. It was nothing like the Xavier Institute. At one point it started feeling like a dungeon. I resisted the urge to ask questions or have second thoughts. I needed to see where this went. I would find out when I came face to face with the devil himself, Arkady Rossovich. The rest of the world knew him as Omega Red._

_When I first saw him he had just finished choking a man with those horrific metal tentacles of his. The stench of blood and mangled flesh hung heavily in the air. I continued to hold back all my fears and concerns, putting on my Colossus appearance for the sake of appearing strong. I do not know what was discussed between the recruiter and Omega Red initially. They spoke English and at the time I did not. When this monster of a man confronted me, he was not impressed at first. Then I showed him my powers and he was suddenly very intrigued._

_What he and the Omega family offered me was overwhelming for any desperate boy of my age. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a stack of money, and placed it on a table. It was without a doubt the most money I had ever seen at this point. Omega Red told me that this money is but pennies compared to the Omega family fortune. He went on about how there was nothing he wouldn't do to protect and strengthen this family. In order to do this he was willing to offer me a very lucrative job in exchange for my services and my powers._

_It was nothing fancy. I was to become a top-level Omega courier. It is essentially the same as a delivery boy, only the deliveries I make involve cargo of the greatest importance. If Omega Red wanted something delivered, I was to be the unstoppable Colossus and move heaven and earth itself to get it into his hands. It would require me to be strong, ruthless, and powerful in the Omega family tradition. They were going to train me to be the very best at what they did. It would mean becoming more like the monster that so many feared. _

_I should have hesitated more than I did. The payoff was simply too great to ignore. Not only would they give me more money than I could ever spend, they would see to it that Illyana would be taken care of. She would get to go to the best schools, have every opportunity she desired, and never want for anything again. Being 18 and desperate, I accepted this offer. Like any deal with the devil, it would come back to haunt me._

The Russian mutant hardened once more, turning his attention back to the heavy weights in front of him. He took on his metal form again and with a determined grunt, he grabbed the bar bell and began another set. This time the pace was quicker and more fervent, the frustration driving him to push harder and with reckless abandon. It was the only way to slow down his mind and his conscious. It would have worked nicely if he hadn't learned this technique from the very people he now so deeply despised.

"The fish…rots…from the head!" grunted Piotr through each rep, "The soul…rots…through the heart!

_It's an old saying in Russia. Generations of corruption and degradation have destroyed the moral fiber of many. Nowhere is this more apparent than the Russian mob. Omega Red was an expert at getting people to leave their conscious at the door when they came to work for him._

_I was in a somewhat privileged position. Because of my powers, he took me under his wing and gave me the kind of training reserved only for the most worthy. He enlisted help from several former Spetznaz operatives and ran me through the rigorous training that so few were equipped to handle. It was not the kind of training to make a man into a warrior. It was the kind of training that made a man into a cold-blooded killing machine. I was pushed, beaten, starved, and abused every step of the way. This hardened me into a mindset that was every bit as durable as my metal form. I had to be nothing short of stone cold in order to do what I was tasked with doing._

_In addition to the rigors, I was also taught the advanced fighting techniques of Russian Special Forces. It allowed me to compliment my strength with skill. They even found time to teach me English, which was the language of business and the language I would have to know in order to conduct myself in the Omega family business. By the time I was 19 I was already going on my first missions, transporting goods and materials in the name of the Omega family. All the while, Illyana lived the benefits of this blood-soaked money._

_As soon as I joined Omega Red, I was given a generous sum of money to get Illyana into a better life. With it and some Omega family connections, I got her enrolled in a well-regarded boarding school in Moscow. It was a great environment where she could learn and excel. It seemed worth the cost of my soul at the time. I didn't tell her what I was doing. I just told her I had a promising new job. Mikhail was the only one who didn't believe me. I suspect he knew and that's why I cut ties with him. I honestly don't know where he even is now. He could be dead for all I know. That's how far working for Omega Red took me away from who I was._

_My first few tasks as they called them were the hardest. Omega Red did not ease me into the job. The very first thing I had to transport was a very rare and very illegal experimental element from China. I had to get it from Shanghai to Moscow within a few days and deal with any obstacles that got in my path. Those obstacles included three men from a rival syndicate who tried to gun me down and a car bomb I encountered in Vladivostok. Each time, my metal skin saved me. Each time, I was struck with an overwhelming fear. But because I was working for Illyana's sake, I was able to set it all aside and remain the cold and stoic Colossus that would later become so feared._

_My success certainly made Omega Red happy. After a few successful tasks, he actually became fond of me and that is beyond rare for a man of his nature. He is fond only of those that help him expand his power and I most certainly contributed in that regard, even if that was not my intention. Omega Red went onto reward me with more money and more resources. In one task I could make more than 50 lifetimes of hard labor. I admit the money was quite alluring. _

_Even more so were the comforts that the Russian Mafia provided. I was able to live in a very nice apartment in downtown Moscow. I was able to acquire my own wealth, something that had not been possible with previous jobs. Then there were the women. Omega Red was quite fond of acquiring the company of beautiful women to serve himself and his allies. He often reserved some of the best for me. Whenever I would bring him a particularly important package, he would smile and direct me to a bedroom in his mansion where three beautiful women were tasked with catering to my every whim for an entire night. It's was not an easy reward to turn down. When you are doing something you know to be wrong, sometimes it helps to drown your doubts in pleasure. I could have walked the path of a traditional Russian thug. But unlike Omega Red, I had Illyana keeping me in check. Providing her with all the comforts she deserved still took precedent though._

_I would visit her every week. She seemed to do well at the boarding school and was well regarded by others. However, she was growing up and becoming quite smart. I may have been able to fool the Russian mob with my Colossus persona, but I could not fool Illyana. She knew I was doing something I didn't like doing. She saw how it affected me. She worried about me and even scorned me. It hurt seeing that innocent face of hers look at me with such conflict. No matter how much Omega Red provided for me, I could not escape Illyana's scrutiny._

_Even with this burden, I did not stop. I couldn't. I had no other options. The Omega Family was the only way I could support myself and my sister. The only way I could cope was to be Colossus when I needed to do a task while holding onto that precious bit of innocence that Illyana was always nurturing. It kept me going. It kept my mind open to new opportunities that could one day take me away from this life. _

_One of those opportunities came when I first crossed the X-men. They happened upon me by chance while investigating a string of sentinel thefts. The Russian Mafia was not involved, but just being in their presence offered a slim ray of hope. Like Illyana, they saw that I was no mere thug. They saw a man who hadn't lost his spirit. I could not accept their help at the time since I was too entrenched in the Omega Family. However, their presence marked a turning point. Shortly after I met the X-men, a new obstacle emerged that could not be fixed by money._

Piotr kept doing more and more reps. His muscles were burning and the veins in his neck were bulging beneath his metal shell. No sweat could form on his skin while in this state. Instead, the metal that surrounded his body became hot. He soon became so hot that sparks started flying from his hands. The friction between the metal of the bar bell and the metal of his grip was making for a volatile workout. It wasn't so much exercise as it was a test of endurance.

"Errrrrrrrrr! UNGH!" seethed the oversized Russian through more violent reps.

With a few more labored grunts, Piotr's stamina finally gave out. He dropped the bar bell back on the matted floor, leaving another deep indentation. Now out of breath and panting heavily, the young man keeled over a bit and fought to regain his composure.

_I shouldn't have been nearly as surprised as I was when it happened. The possibility was certainly there. I was just too naïve to acknowledge it. Illyana was a mutant. She was like me in the sense that she was different to a point where others started calling her a monster._

_This certainly changed things for her. She had just turned 15 and was showing this bizarre energy that was nothing like my metal skin. She would emit light as brilliant as the sun and in an instant, she would disappear from one place and appear somewhere else. Sometimes it was quite far. I remember one night she disappeared from her own bed and ended up on a rooftop several blocks away. It was scary for her and it made life at the boarding school much more difficult._

_The staff was not equipped to deal with her. All those other children who used to call themselves her friends turned their backs on her. They looked at her as if she were a freak. The only reason they did not try and hurt her was because they knew she was my sister. Fear of what I would do or what the Omega Family would do kept her safe, but it did not help her cope any more effectively._

_She managed to gain only a moderate amount of control over her powers. This did not change the fact that she now felt out of place and scared. She no longer felt at home in her own country and she looked to me to do something about it. So I did. I cut my ties with the Russian Mafia. It was to be a lifting of a great burden on my soul. However, leaving the Omega Family is not easy._

_Omega Red was not pleased with my decision. He did not want to see his favorite courier leave him. My loyalty and success was my only saving grace. His fondness for me is what allowed me to leave. That still didn't stop him from making me participate in one final task though. He had me act as a key player in that fateful deal with Sebastian Shaw. This deal was a disaster, not just because Shaw betrayed us but because I had to fight the X-men in the process. These were people I considered turning to in order to help Illyana. I foolishly decided to finish my work with Omega Red. In doing so I only set myself up to make a deal with another devil…one who in many ways is even worse._

Still panting heavily, Piotr rose up and stared bitterly at his reflection in the mirror again. This time he was tempted to smash it with his own fists. Such an outburst wouldn't change the truth. No matter how much he punished himself with these heated workouts, he was still going to be that foolish young man who made a grave mistake not once but on two occasions.

The first mistake was bad enough. Becoming an errand boy for the Russian Mafia put him and Illyana in a dangerous position. On top of that, it corrupted him in a way that he was certainly not proud of. He should have been a better man. He should have learned his lesson. Instead, he put himself in Illyana in even more danger. He placed his trust in a man who once came so very close to destroying this entire world.

_I did it again. I reached out to yet another madman. This time it was Magneto, a man who even Omega Red thought was a devious soul. I believed once again that I had no choice. By fighting the X-men in the battle with Shaw, I thought I destroyed any right I had to reach out to them for help. Magneto was the only other option. No one else knew besides Charles Xavier knew more about helping unstable mutants._

_Omega Red helped broker a deal. He got me in touch with Magneto and we worked out a deal. I would bring Illyana to Genosha and he would grant us special asylum. He and his vast mutant resources would give Illyana the help she needed to control and manage her powers. She didn't like the idea and at times I sense she hated me for even coming up with it. I refused to listen to her. I kept telling myself I was doing the right thing by helping her. Once again, I was proven so very wrong._

_To finalize this deal I had to do one more of my ill-fated tasks. I had to smuggle a special psionic tracking device from Russia to Genosha. It was an uneventful and simple task, at least in the beginning. Omega Red's people help me acquire it and Magneto did the rest. I did not even contemplate what Magneto would use this device for. I did not care. All that mattered to me was helping my sister, even if she still hated me for doing so. That arrogance almost destroyed the world._

_With this device, Magneto would seek out and unwittingly unleash the Cambrian. This creature came very close to doing what his giant asteroid plot failed to do. I had to watch as this monster grew before my very eyes and threaten to overrun the world. It would have been the ultimate burden. Even my strong shoulders never could have taken it. My only saving grace was the X-men. They were the ones that made up for my mistake. They were the ones that set everything right again. Not only did they destroy the Cambrian, but they introduced me to the Seftons and a man named Shaman. These people were able to do what Magneto and the Omega Family could not. They were able to help Illyana._

_It is uncanny how everything came together. Even after all my transgressions, the X-men pulled me and Illyana out of a very difficult position. I am forever indebted to them and to Charles Xavier. As such, I seek to repay this and my many other debts. I am now part of the X-men and for once I feel I'm doing the right thing. At the same time I am still very angry with myself._

_Why did it take me so long to make the right decision? Why did I not listen to Illyana? Why did I keep compromising what I knew was right with what I thought to be necessary? I should be stronger than that. I can lift a tank over my head with ease, but I cannot bear the weight of making the harder decisions when they need to be made. Now that Illyana is with the Seftons and getting the help she needs, I have no excuses. I must bear these burdens on my own. The X-men have given me a chance at redemption. For Illyana, my family, and my soul I will not let it go to waste. I cannot. Even a Colossus can fall if it bears too much weight than can be handled._

Having caught his breath and regained his composure, Piotr regained his poise. It was ironic that someone as strong as him had so much difficulty standing on his own accord. That was the burden of having walked such a dark path while keeping his conscious along for the ride. Illyana wouldn't let him forget and the result was a conflicted soul. That brought him back to his very reason for lifting weights this early in the morning. The lingering burn in his muscles reminded him that there was still much work to be done on his part. He had a long ways to go on his path to redemption.

The Russian mutant kept breathing deep while stretching his muscles. His mind was still tired and the day hadn't even begun yet. He was just about ready to drag himself back up to his room when the door to the weight room opened and Logan stepped in.

"So this is what was causin' all those freakin' thuds," said the feral mutant, who was dressed in a pair of tattered jeans and a dirty shirt.

"Oh…comrade, Logan," said Piotr sheepishly, "I apologize. Did I wake you?"

"Do I look like the kind of guy who gets much sleep to begin with?" he quipped, "You ain't the only one who blows off steam down here this early."

"I see," said the Russian, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly, "So I am not in trouble, yes?"

"Trouble? Bub, between the fucked up issues I gotta deal with and the ones you're clearly dealing with (which I don't even wanna begin to talk about mind you), there ain't no punishment for trying to cope. So long as you don't take up drinking and start stealing my booze, you're a saint for all I care."

Piotr actually laughed at the feral mutant's offbeat words. He didn't laugh much. He came from a world where humor was uncommon to say the least. There was a strange bit of comfort to be had knowing that he wasn't the only one with these burdens. In fact, compared to the rest of the X-men he may not even have it the worst. It only reinforced the idea that this was where he belonged. This was where he could be his own person and bear these burdens as he should.

"Thank you, Logan. I appreciate your honest assessment," said Piotr with a smile.

"Whatever Ruskie," said Logan as he walked off, "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna see how much damage I can do to the Danger Room before Chuck goes bankrupt."

* * *

**Up Next: General Grimshaw**


	3. Nathan Grimshaw

**Supreme Reflections  
Nathan Grimshaw  
**

* * *

**General Nathan Grimshaws's Reflections (AN: Takes place after issue 77)**

The state of human affairs has always been plagued by wars. For as long as there has been civilization, there have been people fighting over whatever it is they choose to fight for. Sometimes it isn't even a choice. Sometimes war is an unavoidable state in a world with only finite resources and infinite reasons for uncertainty. Those tasked with fighting these wars are often key contributors to the pages of history. Few were equipped to handle that kind of responsibility. General Nathan Grimshaw was one of the rare few who had been shouldering that responsibility for decades.

He had been engaged in the business of war for most of his life. The job of General for the United States of America was not an easy career path to say the very least. Few lasted for very long and even fewer were remembered for their contributions. In his considerable experience he had seen many conflicts won and lost. He always saw himself as the kind of General who was meant to be part of a very big conflict. Just recently he thrust himself into such a conflict he did not have to be part of. Unlike other Generals, history did not call upon him to fight this war. He volunteered and it had the potential to lead him to greatness or ruin.

_Victorious warriors win first and then go to war while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. The great Chinese General, Sun Tzu, said those words over 2,000 years ago and only a handful of tyrants, liberators, and rebels have heeded them in that time. I've always tried to take lessons from history and it's not just because of the old adage of being doomed to repeat it. I believe there is a wealth of knowledge in the past that this country and every country for that matter would be wise to heed._

_There's always a war on the horizon. Every nation, even the Swiss, are just a few unlucky events from an all out medieval blood feud. That's what happens when politics get too complicated for the people to handle. The talking heads on CNN and Fox News love to paint overly simplistic pictures, but anybody who actually does this shit for a living knows full well that these political junkies never get more than twenty percent of the overall picture. If they even got somewhere near forty percent, they would quit their little act and go to work for the nearest fast food joint because the painful truth is that all wars are political in nature and politics will always be corrupt._

_The burden always falls upon the Generals tasked with winning the conflicts that the politicians create. In a ways the General of an army has the hardest task of all. He can't just be a politician and bloviate endlessly about what to do and how they're going to do it. They are different from all politicians in the sense that they actually DO these things on the battlefield where the margin for error is a lot smaller than simply signing pieces of paper._

_I suppose that's why I'm now on the front lines of the biggest possible war for this millennium. The human/mutant conflict has more potential than any other conflict to spark a war that would make every war in the 20__th__ century look like a chili cook-off. Most reasonably minded people wouldn't touch this conflict with a fifty mile pole and fully sterilized gloves. I'm either crazy or foolish to want to get involved with this mess. Then again I've always been a hands-on kind of guy. _

_I make no secret about my methods. I have a very low tolerance for people saying one thing and not doing anything. In some ways I actually admire hypocrites more because at least they're working up a sweat in what they do. That makes it a lot harder to admire politicians who insist on staying behind the scenes, trying to understand the human/mutant conflict from the point of view of a faceless bureaucrat. If history has one lesson to teach about war it's that a bureaucrat can never understand a conflict as well as a soldier._

The past, present, and future were all pressing the spirits of this accomplished General. In the present he had the responsibility of taking action on a conflict that nobody understood or even cared to understood. In the future he had the prospect of a war that could literally wipe the planet clean of all civilization. It was even a worse prospect than nuclear war because at least with nuclear war, the destructive power of the conflict was contained in machines and not people. In the past there were the harsh lessons that Grimshaw had spent his entire life trying to understand. On a rainy day in Washington DC, they took form and substance in the form of a monument to a conflict that cost so many lives.

In the shadow of the Washington Monument, there was a memorial to all those who fought and died in World War II. The General had a rare break in his work and was touring the area in the midst of a heavy downpour. He always found it helpful to visit these monuments to the past because in them, he felt the ghosts of history sending their knowledge to the present. There was much to be heard for men like him if only they were willing to listen.

_History books often paint World War II as the good war. So many legendary names and compelling stories emerged from this conflict. Politicians and Hollywood producers love to frame it as this grand and noble struggle where America represented everything that was good and the Axis powers represented everything that was evil. It makes for good campaign fodder, but it doesn't tell the whole story._

_I'm lucky enough to know part of that story because my own father was a high ranking Colonel during the conflict. He's not a famous name and probably won't ever get a reference in a History Channel documentary, but what he experienced is every bit as important as what the newsreels convey. I remember these experiences because my father never hid them from me. He never hid anything from me or my siblings. To him the war was a lesson in conflict and he wanted to convey that lesson to his children._

_My father, like me, had a very low tolerance for nonsense. He didn't ignore the ugly details for the sake of framing a pretty picture for others to consume. That's why he was always surveying the battlefields, noting how the conflicts unfolded and reporting to his superiors what this meant for future confrontations. During these surveys he met a lot of amazing people from both the Allies and the Axis. He had so many fond stories about his friends from Britain and Russia, but it was the stories about the Axis that always fascinated me._

_One story always stood out among the others. In 1944 my father met up with a captured German soldier named Herbert. He was part of an artillery squad that got captured shortly after the invasion of Normandy. The man was no insane Nazi scumbag. He was just a 20-year-old kid who joined up with his friends to serve their country. What really confused me is that he didn't speak very highly of Hitler. In fact, he often cracked jokes about how Hitler had such a weak stomach and wouldn't even eat a salad it if had chicken broth in it. So my father went onto ask why he was fighting for the Nazis and his answer was a microcosm of the whole conflict._

_After World War I, Germany was so crippled by the defeat and the treaty they were forced to sign that the average German was practically pulling their hair out in frustration. Herbert was a kid still in school at the time and his father lost his job because of the economic disaster that followed. Then when Hitler came along promising to revitalize the economy, they gave him the benefit of the doubt. They didn't expect him to start a full blown war. When it did happen, Herbert joined up and not because he hated Jews or wanted to conquer the world. He joined because that's the only job he could find. He loved his country and if he could serve it while drawing a paycheck, so be it._

_This is a story my father heard many times before, but none were as honest about it as Herbert. It had in it a profound implication. This terrible war that unleashed the Blitzkrieg, the atom bomb, and the holocaust weren't just the result of typical human barbarism. This war was due in large part to the piss poor handling of another war. If the politicians and military heads weren't so damn full of themselves after World War I, then guys like Hitler never would have gotten their opportunity. The lesson for me was that war can lead to more war if too many people think with their gut and not their brain._

_World War I may not have made World War II inevitable, but it certainly set the stage. My father never forgot that and whenever someone would talk about the war with me, he would always pull me aside to give the real story. Nothing bugged him more than hearing other people who weren't even involved talk about how the war made America great and how the Nazi's came so close to wiping out our way of life. My father knew better. He understood that men like Hitler are not the evil masterminds that history books make them out to be. In fact, most are painfully human. Men like Hitler never came close to winning the war for the simple fact that the guy had more luck than brains. My father described him as the guy who sat down at a blackjack table and beat all the seasoned pros because he just got lucky time and again. _

_Eventually, that luck ran out. All luck runs out. In war there will always be a certain element of luck involved and that is why you need both luck and brains. My father understood that better than anybody and he told me that if I ever had to be involved in a war, I needed to make sure I had one to compensate for the lack of another. Since luck can't be taught or acquired, I focused on the brains aspect. That's what led me into a life of war and I haven't looked back since._

A round of thunder echoed over the dreary skies of DC. They were like the voices of the past shouting warnings to men like Nathan Grimshaw who was always trying to listen. Walking up and down the memorial, he gazed over the famous field of stars. There were a total of 4,048 bronze stars, each representing 100 service personnel who were killed in the conflict. It was a daunting notion, these symbols representing the loss of so many lives. They represented the cost of war and why it was so terrible.

As General Grimshaw walked up and down the wall, he trailed his hand over rows of stars. It was difficult to comprehend the stories behind these stars and the lives they represented. These were fathers, brothers, sons, and lovers. Who knows what lives they could have lived without this conflict? Maybe there was another Einstein or a Mozart among the dead. History would never know. That was the unseen cost of war that often went unnoticed and one that was never far from Grimshaw's mind.

_I figured out early on that I was going to be a military man. When I was just a kid, I would spend hours with my little toy soldiers simulating these elaborate wars. I planned everything down to the last detail. I even gave names to the commanders. If that weren't enough my father would often play the game with me. He would even show me these complex formations and strategies, teaching me the kind of tactics that made Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, and Napoleon Bonaparte such brilliant tacticians. I would learn from him for hours until my mother would yell at us to come in for dinner. It may have been fun and games, but it prepared me for more serious endeavors._

_When I turned 16 I enrolled in this upscale private military academy. Thanks to my father I had a ridged scholarship, but it was anything but a free ride. My family wouldn't allow it. I had to earn my place and earn it I did. I showed my superiors that I was focused, hard-working, and determined to serve my country. This was enough to get me a shot at West Point Military Academy. This is where soldiers become Generals and I was determined to rise through the ranks._

_I never did anything halfway. I put everything I had into proving I could be an officer. The more I immersed myself in the art of war the more certain I was that this was what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a General. I wanted to weave my way into the course of history by being part of the wars that so often guided it. I learned plenty about the military, modern combat, and history. I also learned that I was very different from my superiors and my own peers in the way I approached a conflict._

_I realized this shortly after entering my junior year. At the time Vietnam was really going badly and everybody had their theories about what should and shouldn't be done. Some thought the war should be expanded while others thought that America should just pull back, play defense, and let the North Vietnamese tire themselves out. I practically turned myself into a pariah when I posed the audacious idea of using a different kind of strategy. I argued that America should use diplomacy to make an ally out of China. That way we would have a means of applying a new kind of pressure to the North Vietnamese. I was practically laughed out of the room. Everybody told me I had been hanging out with too many hippies. I came close to being a laughingstock._

_Then a few months later, Nixon visited China and my once outlandish idea was vindicated. Overnight, everybody who doubted me shut their mouths and looked at me as if I just bankrupted them in a lucky hand at poker. But there was nothing lucky about it. I based my strategy on the tenants of war I had been studying all my life. By being broad in my thinking, I could come up with novel ways to fight and resolve a conflict. Thanks to Tricky Dick Nixon I was vindicated and more confident than ever that I was destined to be a great officer._

_When I graduated West Point at the top of my class, I was ready to hit the battlefield. I was so ready I would have run head first into the jungles of Southeast Asia or the deserts of the Middle East. It's part of the youthful energy all new officers tend to get when they finish their training and prepare to hit the battlefield. What they never teach you in any classroom is that the road to being a top ranked General is long and arduous. There's a little something called bureaucracy you have to work your way through first. All points considered, that process is a war in and of itself._

The General reached the end of the field of stars. He took a few steps back so he could take in the sight of the entire wall. Going over each individual star was a good way to connect with the stories behind the men and women who fought in this great conflict. Standing back and looking at them all as one painted a different kind of picture. These brave warriors when put together were an army. Like all armies before them, they forged the path which the war had unfolded. It was a lesson that all great military men learned to respect. While they may formulate the orders, it was the armies that did the heavy lifting.

From the military academy to West Point, he trained and studied the many ways in which to lead an army. What he didn't learn was the logistics of actually having an army to lead. It was only recently that he was in a position to do so. For most of his career, he was a General without an army. He had to prove himself within the ranks of the United States Military that he was equipped to handle such a great responsibility.

_Not long after I graduated, I was appointed to the Pentagon. Officially, I was a Lieutenant Colonel, but unofficially I was a glorified desk jockey. My first few years as an officer were pretty uneventful, not to mention frustrating. My youth was my greatest shortcoming and I had to work my way up through a painfully slow process. The ironic part is I still rose through the ranks quicker than my peers._

_Around this time, I did manage to establish a decent civilian life. I did some traveling, I got married, and had a few little soldiers of my own. My wife happens to be a military woman herself. She worked as a nurse with the Veterans Administration and today she's a full fledged doctor. She, more than anyone, encouraged me to take on the responsibilities of a General. She always came home with one too many stories about soldiers who had seen too much war and were seriously wounded by it in more ways than one. It was a constant reminder that nobody hates wars more than warriors and as a General, I needed to remember that as I forged ahead with my career._

_Eventually, I rose to the rank of Colonel and was given a series of real operations. It was nothing terribly Earth-shattering. Most of the wars I fought were these small, proxy wars that nobody else wanted to fight. I spent some time in South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East managing conflicts in the way I had been trained. With every conflict, I proved to myself and others that I could handle the challenge of fighting a war. I quickly earned a solid reputation within the military community. I had a unique style that set me apart, some of it good and some of it controversial._

_This conflicted praise was best shown in one of my first missions as a General. I was given the daunting task of trying to stem a conflict in Columbia concerning a new militia with ties to the big name drug cartels. Nobody had been having much luck stopping their growth or stemming the violence. So I took a shot with some quick, daring raids that gave some of my superiors heart attacks. I organized a series of covert operations that put spies right into the heart of the militia. I used that intelligence to do some quick sabotage of their communications network and then I threw a little tension into the mix by messing up some of their money transfers to foreign banks. I then convinced the top brass to give me control of a large contingent of Green Berets, which I admit was like trying to convince a crack addict to give me all of his crack. But they gave me a chance and with these soldiers, I delivered a blow that nobody thought was possible._

_In a one-night operation, I struck each major compound simultaneously. Thanks to the spies I set up, I didn't just hit their weapons caches or their drug reserves. I hit the areas where they were moving the money in and out of their territory. Suddenly, they had all these resources and no money with which to govern themselves. It didn't take long for chaos to set in and the whole militia disbanded within months. It was a quick, clean, decisive victory. It caused some political backlash due to my use of Special Forces, but the results spoke for themselves. Even though a new militia took the place of the old one within a few years, I showed that I could get the job done._

_Quick, smart, and rough…that was the essence of my strategy. I didn't leave room for politics or coordination. I kept it simple and focused. While it may have worked, it did clash with a lot of the other officers in the top brass at the time. Ever since the Korean War, there always had to be room for politics. These operations were too compact and brief. They didn't leave room extra diplomacy or potential political maneuvering. I always argued that this was a bad way to conduct wars. By making them bureaucratic, the wars get drawn out and no country ever benefits from wars like that. History has shown that time and again. But this was a sensitive period in world history. Politics were weaving their way into everything because the world was getting so much smaller and more complicated. The tactics of old school Generals seemed to not apply anymore._

_Even if my methods were controversial, that didn't prevent me from eventually gaining the rank of General. It took years and by the time I had the fancy uniform and title, it was somewhat bittersweet. That was because even after I had the rank, I was still stuck with the same job. The only wars the military would let me fight were the small wars. They reasoned that this is what I was good at. They enjoyed the luxury of having me do the grunt work while they dealt with the much larger issues at hand. I wanted to be part of those larger issues as well. I sure as hell didn't want to spend the rest of my career fighting battles that would only be footnotes in pages of history. _

_As frustrated as I was, I did what I was told like any good soldier. In some ways this grunt work was good for me because it allowed me to gain more combat experience than I would have otherwise. That experience was invaluable because along the way, I noted the trends that were emerging in the constantly unfolding geopolitical landscape. I could sense that there was a much bigger conflict on the horizon. Just like the signs before World War II and Vietnam, societies and nations were on a path that had plenty of potential for a very bloody war the likes of which nobody had seen before._

_At the source of this conflict was an old phenomenon that had literally been evolving for centuries if not millennia. The emergence of mutants had long been part of human history. For the most part it had been relegated to folk tales and sideshow attractions. Then around the beginning of the 20__th__ century something unexpected happened. The mutant population started growing rapidly and by the dawn of the new millennium their numbers had gotten to a point where they were now a force to be reckoned with. Society and civilization was at a loss for how to deal with them and when ignorance and anxiety rule the day, the chance for conflict is practically a given._

_I always suspected that the next big war would be a mutant war, but I didn't feel inclined to thrust myself into it. That all changed when I met a young, arrogant, and dedicated young man named Jack Freeman._

The heavy rain let up slightly, allowing the General to see rest of the monument more clearly. He turned his attention away from the field of stars and toward the array of pillars that surrounded the structure. There was a pillar representing each state, symbolizing the collective strength of America as it fought and sacrificed for the war effort. One pillar in particular drew his attention. It was the pillar representing the state of California, which happened to be the home state of a very special soldier.

_California has long been labeled a hippie stronghold, especially in cities like San Francisco. If you want to look for a full-fledged, born-to-serve soldier then this would be the last place to look. Yet this is where Jack Freeman came from and before he put on a uniform, he was anything but soldier material._

_Even he admits he was a punk. He had no future and made his living selling drugs out of the back of a pickup truck. Even when he managed to get his act together and join the marines, he did not make a very smooth transition. On top of it all, he was a mutant and a pretty strong one at that. This could have derailed his military career before it started because the United States had signed an international treaty banning the use of mutants in the military. Somehow this kid managed to keep it under wraps. He didn't tell me how he got his status pass the mandatory medical exam. I honestly don't want to know, but I'm pretty sure drugs were involved._

_To his credit he did not use his mutant powers to make his training easier. He worked, suffered, and sweated through basic like every grunt. He was one of those guys who found a sense of peace in the discipline. It seems counterintuitive, but for some people who have had so little throughout their lives it gives order to an otherwise chaotic life. He embraced that aspect of being a soldier and it helped that he was a natural born fighter as well. I don't know if it was because he was from a rough background or if it was just in his blood. I just know he excelled in a way that can't be trained._

_Besides being a mutant, Jack did have another obstacle that worked against him. He had the social skills of an immature six-year-old. He constantly clashed with his squad mates and often tried to act tough when he should have tried being smart. His superiors sure lost their patience with him at times. That's part of how I got involved with him. I happened to be touring a training facility in California at the time, talking to some of the Majors about who would make good candidates for my Special Forces operations. Jack didn't come up in any conversations, but he did get my attention when I saw him competing in hand-to-hand drills with his squad mates. Although looking back on it, I don't think they were drills._

_I'll never forget that look in his eye when I first saw him. He was getting ganged up on a bit during the whole affair, but he stood his ground. He didn't cry foul or anything. He just kept on fighting, taking each challenger as they came. Normally when someone is in that situation, there's a sense of irrational urgency. It's the kind of mindset that makes even the best trained soldiers fight erratically. Yet somehow, this kid never lost focus. He took on the task at hand as if it was a mission, never losing sight of the goal and never letting anyone throw him off balance._

_I saw in him a potential I had never seen in a soldier. I immediately recommended him for Special Forces. Every Major on the base thought I had lost it. Good thing I outranked them because they had no choice but to comply. I was the one who personally gave Jack the news. When I first met him he wasn't as respectful as he should have been to a superior officer, but he did show poise and honor in the presence of his superiors. I understood that if I was to really gain this guy's trust, I needed to earn his respect. I did that by essentially taking him under my wing, imparting to him the same wisdom my own father imparted to me._

_It was also during this first meeting that I found out he was a mutant. I quietly had a doctor look him over and they confirmed it. He was X-factor positive. His powers weren't all that obvious. He had this hyper-adaptive ability that allowed him to adjust his physiology to survive conditions that would leave any ordinary man a corpse. He could breathe underwater if he had to. He could grow his muscles to gain a temporary boost in strength. If this ability got out it would cause all sorts of political problems, but I understood it couldn't stay a secret forever. So as a means of earning his trust, I told him I could make it so he wasn't kicked out and allowed to join Special Forces. He was skeptical, but he took me on my word. Thus began a relationship that would link the fates of our respective missions for years._

General Grimshaw found himself smiling at the pillar despite the rain pouring around him. For every officer that ever led an operation, it was easy to forget the individuals behind the soldiers that made these missions work. Soldiers by their nature were trained not to be individuals and fight as a collective. Even when one individual stood out, it was still the group that carried the brunt of the burden.

Then there were those select few that had something very unique…something that took a soldier and made them into something much more. It wasn't something that could be trained. It was a god-given gift. It wasn't the kind of gift that Hollywood loved to flaunt with their big name action stars. It was something that couldn't be captured on film or even on a battlefield. It was the genuine spirit of a warrior, one that could turn one human being into a one-man army capable of making a difference on the battlefield.

_I don't remember how many strings I had to pull to keep Jack in the service. I must have called in over two dozen favors from subordinates, their friends, and their friends' friends. In this case bureaucracy worked for me rather than against me. A few well-connected individuals managed to get executive approval for what was officially a special unit that wasn't bound by the mutant-ban treaty. The paperwork itself is about as thick as the bible, but it did the trick. It gave Jack Freeman, a mutant, the chance to be a soldier._

_He took full advantage of that chance to say the least. He joined Special Forces with the kind of enthusiasm I had never seen before. He took to that training like it was an amusement park. He loved it even if it pushed his limits to the point where he passed out a few times. He was still lacking in the social skills department. His fellow trainees did not respect him. They all thought he was getting a special pass because of relationship with me. They were dead wrong, but Jack's overly defensive personality made for some ugly clashes. He made himself so unpopular that no squad wanted to work with him. Even after he made it through training, he would have to be a solo act. That was just fine with him because that only meant he could more efficiently utilize his mutant talents in conjunction with his combat skills._

_Once he officially took on the rank of Captain, he became my unofficial right-hand man. Now whenever I needed some deep covert operations, I no longer had to coax a few platoons out of my superiors. I turned to Captain Freeman and he did everything a General could ask of a soldier. I gave him an objective, provided him the tools he needed to achieve that objective, and he did the rest. He entered into war zones that straddled the boarders of Hell and did so without question or reservation. Not only did he conduct himself without fear, he was uncanny in his efficiency in succeeding where ten squads of equally trained soldiers would fail._

_In our years together he went on missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Columbia, Bolivia, Cambodia, North Korea, Iran, the Congo, Nigeria, Russia, the Balkan, and even a few exceedingly remote islands in the South Pacific. Pretty much everywhere there was a war, he paid a visit. He took on the jobs that no other soldier wanted. He always did so on his own, never having anyone to fall back on except myself and his own wits. He wasn't without flaws in this process. At times he was a little careless and on more than one occasion he screwed up on his pursuit of the objective. Regardless, he never left a mission incomplete._

_Our success did wonders for our careers. I gained more influence throughout the upper echelons of the military while Captain Freeman gained more respect. He never got the respect he fully deserved. Part of that was because of his mutant status, but another part was probably his attitude. He still rubbed people the wrong way, even his superiors. That didn't stop them from taking advantage of his skills. _

_A couple years ago a few officers even enlisted his help to take on missions they hadn't been able to carry out on their own. Some of it was purely political. I'm sure there were a few that the top brass threw at him in hopes that he wouldn't come out alive. But time and again, he proved his worth as a soldier. Working with him gave me a unique prospective that helped put me in the position I now find myself in._

_Were it not for Jack Freeman, I never would have approached the human/mutant conflict in the same manner. Even though I anticipated mutant affairs as being the driving force for the next great conflict, I never truly understood the people behind the conflict until I met this charismatic soldier. He showed me two important truths to the mutant phenomenon. Mutation is both what someone is and what they do. That's something most people don't get. For some they either are what they are or they are what they do. It makes them unique among minorities because both play into how they conduct themselves._

_What always astonished me about Captain Freeman was that he didn't want to be thought of as a mutant. In fact, he saw being a mutant as being a liability. He was Jack Freeman the soldier before he was Jack Freeman the mutant. That's how he saw himself, but nobody else shared that perspective. He couldn't escape what he was. He could only set himself apart through actions. _

_It is this personal conflict that drives the entire mutant controversy. For me, a regular human being with no special powers, it's difficult to wrap my head around. But after working with a man like Jack Freeman and experiencing first hand the challenges people like him face, I understand in a way few ordinary humans can. It is that understanding that equips me to take on the human/mutant conflict as my own personal mission. If I don't, then the chances for more World War II style slaughter become too great._

General Grimshaw casually walked down the row of pillars, passing the one representing California and moving along each successive state. In a conflict as big as World War II, every state lost somebody. Everywhere in the country, there was a family who got that message that no family wanted to get. Their loved one had perished in a bloody war that took a greater toll with each passing day. This didn't even get into the hardship families in other countries had to face. Even on the side of the enemies, there were loved ones who wept for their losses.

That was a lot of sorrow. It was too much to risk another conflict of that scale. Society had changed. Civilization and technology made the cost of war increasingly grave. Now with the mutant conflict, it wasn't just nations that faced potential ruin. The entire world was at risk of being consumed. That's why he took on the responsibility of confronting that risk. Whether it was destiny or duty, he was poised to steer the course of history for humans and mutants alike.

_With the stakes so high, I needed to put together a plan. I almost didn't get a chance to implement it because Magneto had a run in with psychosis and nearly destroyed the whole world with his little asteroid stunt. The aftermath of that mess set the stage for my mission. First, it required that a new president be elected. The other guy was so ruined I can't even say his name without getting pissed. Even though he probably did the right thing, he crippled his legacy and left an unstable military with too many itchy trigger fingers pointed at mutants._

_The problem comes down to fear. Mutants can do some extraordinary things with their powers and that scares a lot of people. They don't know how to deal with it in an orderly society. That problem gained a new level of terror when mutants started organizing with men like Magneto leading the pack. As a minority who routinely gets shafted by bigotry and hatred, it's easy to see why they would get angry and try to fight back. That doesn't make Magneto any less a madman for overthrowing Genosha and putting together his own mutant nation, but it does add a context. Mutants want to confront humans and humans want to confront humans. That's where I come in._

_When President Robert Kelly took office both sides were staring down the barrel of a gun. This is a guy who built a career out of stoking the fear of mutants. He stoked it so well he rode it to the White House. For a while it looked like my plan wasn't going to work. Then word got out his son was a mutant and now he has an emotional stake in the conflict. That changed everything. It meant that maybe he could be reached. _

_Time was not on my side. The tension between humans and mutants was getting too hot to handle. I had to earn the man's trust and to do it overnight. So like my father taught me, I thought outside the box. I got Captain Jack Freeman to help me offer the president a token of my sincerity so to speak. I had him steal Magneto's helmet and give it to the new president as an inauguration present. He was understandably impressed. He was so impressed he gave me the opportunity I had been waiting for my whole life._

_Now here I am, General to a newly agency of the United States government. The Mutant Security Agency is certainly not what a lot of people were probably expecting from Kelly's earlier anti-mutant rhetoric. This agency is no mutant Gestapo like I'm sure some mutant haters were hoping for. Our job isn't to hunt and contain mutants. Our job is to hold mutants accountable to the same standard we hold everybody else. Nobody is above the law no matter what their abilities. This is a fundamental principle of the American ideal and as an American General, it's my responsibility to uphold that principle._

_My reasoning has nothing to do with being pro-mutant or anti-mutant. On this issue I break from my fellow officers and take a neutral position. That's the only position a man of my rank can take on such emotional matters. There are those who see mutants as the new Communism. Now that the Cold War is over, it's the mutants that will ruin civilization as we know it. The ironic part of that pig-headed belief is that by treating them as such, that may very well be the case. There's no worse prophecy than a self-fulfilling prophecy and that's why I remain indifferent._

_As far as I'm concerned, mutants are just another highly scrutinized minority. As such they have the same potential for destruction as everyone else. Except with mutants, their powers put them in a position to inflict a level of destruction no other minority is capable of unleashing. They can't be held to the same standard in that respect. A mutant that can crush cars with his bear hands is far more dangerous than some ordinary punk with a bazooka. We can't change the power that mutant wields, but we as law-givers can adapt in a ways to hold this mutant accountable._

_We walk a very fine line in this conflict. Just holding mutants accountable to the law isn't going to stop that one Magneto from losing his mind and going on a genocidal rampage. The temptation to be proactive and aggressively contain mutants as men like Cameron Hodge have tried to do has plenty of allure, but sometimes what's most intuitive isn't what's right. It's men like Hodge and the crimes they commit against mutants and humans alike that drive mutants to become the Magneto's of the world. As difficult as it may be at times, we as a society have to hold back. There will always be a certain element of fear. That's why it's so important to confront that fear because the consequences are too dire to contemplate._

_There are many angles to this conflict, but they are best personified by two people. One is Magneto, the man who seems bent on making mutants the dominant species. The way he sees it, humanity is dead weight and mutants are the future. Since humanity is so inferior, he seeks to put mutants on the top of the world order and let humanity whither away to extinction. He wants this war to happen because he believes his side can win._

_The other side is represented by a man named Charles Xavier. He represents the lesser side that deeply respects humanity and seeks peace between humans and mutants. He believes that together, humans and mutants can become equals and forge a better future for themselves if they work together. With his X-men, he fights for that peace and admirably so. But the problem with Charles Xavier is that he's often too idealistic for his own good at times. His approach to the conflict is like ruffling up a clean piece paper. When you do something to it, you create a flaw that cannot be removed. Even though I consider him an ally, I also consider him a liability because while his intentions may be good it would take only one major misstep to send the entire affair straight to Hell._

_I don't consider myself a champion of peace between humans and mutants. I honestly don't believe that's possible. I am in the business of war and right now the human/mutant conflict has the potential to unleash a war that could literally scorch this planet clean of all life. The day this conflict ceases to provoke that war is the day I stop caring about mutant affairs. In the meantime, I will carry out my mission._

General Nathan Grimshaw continued to brave the pouring rain. He took his time, walking by each pillar that symbolized so much history. It was from this history that he hoped to draw on the lessons of the past. With this knowledge, he was prepared to face the conflict that was now such a big part of his life. The greatest Generals in history were often forged in great wars. Depending on how the affairs between humans and mutants played out, his place in history would be one of triumph or infamy.

With this daunting prospect in mind, the General ended his venture into history near a wall where a famous quote from General Dwight D. Eisenhower had been etched in the stone. Through the pouring rain, he read it aloud to himself.

"You are about to embark upon the great crusade toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle."

It was as if the ghost of General Eisenhower was addressing him directly. Never one to disrespect a fellow officer, General Grimshaw saluted and responded in the most fitting way.

"I won't let you down, Ike."

* * *

**Up next: Lorna Dane  
**


	4. Lorna Dane

**Supreme Reflections  
Lorna Dane  
**

* * *

**Lorna's Reflections (AN: Takes place after issue 88)**

_I'm so not ready for this. I've never been ready for ANYTHING like this. Why me? Why do I always get stuck with these insane burdens? I'm not a superhero. I'm not a leader. I'm a teenage girl with teenage problems. I should be worrying about boys, homework, and the next big name on Dancing with the Stars. But I'm not normal. I can't be normal. I'm a mutant who happens to be the biological daughter of Magneto. If bad luck was a professional sport, I would be in the hall of fame._

The ruins of Magneto's citadel was now the dominant structure on the Genoshan landscape. The once proud building that Magneto had crafted with his powers using tons upon tons of metal had been reduced to rubble. The destruction wrought by the Cambrian and the battle it caused was extensive. It didn't just destroy buildings. It destroyed a fragile balance that had been carefully maintained since Magneto became ruler of this tiny island nation.

Lorna had the responsibility if not the misfortune of maintaining that balance. Her father, Magneto, was a complicated man with a lot of pent up frustration. He had been prepared to wipe every man, woman, and child off the face of the Earth. That's how embittered he was after a lifetime of experiencing human conflict. He spent years seeking to destroy a world he saw as corrupt. He would have kept seeking had Lorna not entered the picture and reached out to him, appealing to that lingering sliver of humanity that her mother once experienced.

She left her whole life in America behind to stay by her father's side. She joined him because she was the only one who could keep Magneto from completely losing himself in his rage. For a while, Lorna succeeded. She worked with her father as he built a new nation on Genosha. It promised to be a nation where mutants could come and live peaceful lives apart from human oppression. That promise was essentially broken when Magneto sought to use the Cambrian to make mutants more powerful so they could dominate humanity. The ruins of that broken promise were now symbolized in the ruins of his citadel. Under a full moon in the late hours of the night, she traversed the mangled ruins in a solemn daze.

_Damn you, father. Why did you have to do it? Why did you have to destroy everything we had worked for? I thought we were helping each other. You helped me embrace this new life on Genosha and I helped counter that burning hatred in your heart. Either I didn't do my part or you flat out lied each time we seemed to share a moment. Did you really expect the Cambrian to fix everything? Did that monster drive you crazy or just tap some darkened piece of your soul that was already there?_

_I wish I knew the answers. I wish I had half the resolve the X-men or even the Brotherhood seem to carry with them. They're both strong enough to know when they've gone too far or haven't gone far enough. I obviously lack that talent because I'm not like them. I wish I was and I'm working hard to catch up with them. It's failures like these that remind me just how much longer I have to go._

_At no point in my life did I have any conditioning to prepare me for what I would face. My half-siblings, Wanda and Pietro, were groomed by Magneto from a young age to join his battle. My ex-boyfriend, Bobby Drake, had an adventurous spirit that helped prepare him for what he would face with the X-men. Even guys from the Brotherhood like Blob had that Texas rodeo to make the transition into this life easier. Even though I have some pretty potent mutant powers, I never developed the nerves to use them in the ways that mattered._

_There was no major conflict to toughen me up in my early life. I was born to a single mother in New York City. I grew up in a less than threatening neighborhood in a painfully comfortable middle class environment. Even though I never had a father growing up, my mother more than made up for it. She loved me and provided for me as well as any child could ask. She was kind, loving, and well-educated. She had a Masters in humanities from Boston College and held some pretty high positions for a number of non-profit humanitarian organizations. She had a very big heart and she imparted a lot of that heart to me over the years._

_If my mother had one flaw during those early years it's that she was overprotective. I know a lot of kids think that way about their parents on some levels, but I think I can safely say my mother qualified. She would do things like put duct tape around anything with a corner and add extra padding to my toys. She kept my bed in her room for the first several years of my life and on more than one occasion, I would wake up with her just watching over me. I didn't understand why she was so protective at the time. I just assumed that's because she loved me so much. I had no idea there was a much darker reason for her unique brand of parenting._

A cold wind blew over the rubble of the citadel and Lorna hugged her shoulders through a wave of shivers. Genosha never really got that cold, but walking in the shadows of all this destruction was enough to send a shiver down anyone's spine regardless of the temperature. The young woman had to stop for a moment and gather herself. It was times like this she missed her mother.

"Mom…I've never needed your overprotective love so badly," she said with a strained voice.

_I took her for granted. There's no easy way around it. Even if I didn't understand her reasoning, her heart was always in the right place and I forgot that on one too many occasions._

_When I was ten she took me overseas to Paris where she was attending a human rights conference with Amnesty International. For a kid my age, human rights weren't all that interesting. If there weren't toys, cartoons, or animals involved I quickly got bored. I think my mom wanted to show me the merits of her work so that I would appreciate them. The only thing I ended up appreciating was the weather because I refused to be cooped up in buildings with all these overdressed adults talking about things I could care less about. So I did what most kids would do in that situation and tried to find my own entertainment._

_While we were outside the conference center, I wandered off into the streets of downtown Paris. I was in awe of everything I saw. Every building was almost like a work of art and it made me want to explore even more. It really didn't dawn on me that I had wandered too far. I was so excited that I honestly didn't feel an ounce of concern. I kept walking through the crowds until I ended up at this restaurant. Right along the curb, there was this mime doing all these little tricks for people passing by. Some were creeped out by him. Some flat out ignored him. I was neither. I was ecstatic. I laughed and cheered as if I was walking through Disneyland. The mime was really nice to me. He smiled and did these tricks for me. I was having a lot of fun._

_Then out of nowhere, I heard this scream from across the street. It was my mother. She literally came running after me at full speed in heels and a pants suit, nearly causing at least three traffic accidents in the process. I was shocked and so was the mime. By the time my mother reached me, he was already backing away. I was upset, but I didn't have much chance to vent my frustrations because my mom literally scooped me up in my arms and held me as if I was a life raft in the middle of the ocean. At first I was upset. Then I discovered that she was actually crying._

"_Thank heavens you're alright, Lorna! Please don't ever do that to me again! Don't ever wander off where I can't find you! Don't ever make me worry about losing you!"_

_She must have said that exact string of words at least ten times. I'm pretty sure we got our share of odd looks as well and it's a good thing I didn't speak French either because they probably thought we were crazy or something. I wanted to tell my mother that I was just exploring. I didn't want her to make a big deal out of this. But with the way she was hugging me, there was nothing I could possibly say. I was completely silent the whole time and I don't think I said another word for the rest of the trip._

_Moments like that helped set the stage for how my teen years would develop. I came to accept my mother's overprotective nature as part of my life. I didn't question it. I didn't try to figure out if there was an underlying reason. I assumed blindly that my mother had her reasons and I didn't need to know. That was another mistake on my part and one that would really come back to bite me once my mutant powers manifested._

Some of the metal around Lorna shook. Her festering emotions often roused her powers in chaotic ways. It didn't happen often, but when it did Lorna hated it. Her world was in chaos. She had control over so little of what brought her to this point. Being surrounded by the metal shards of the citadel was probably not the best place for her, but there was nowhere else for her to be at this point.

Taking a deep breath, Lorna settled down and fought to regain her poise. She clenched her fists and took control of her powers. At first the metal around her shook even more. After a few more seconds, it ceased. It wasn't the first time her powers flared up during a time of distress. It wasn't even the most destructive…not by a long shot.

_As I entered my teen years my mom did step back a little so I could grow. I'm not sure if this was her choice either. She had been dealing with some health issues that I thought were just minor at the time. I had no idea it was so much worse than that. How could I when my own body seemed to be turning against me?_

_Being in an overprotective environment, I lacked the social skills most kids my age had. By the time I was 15 and entered high school, I was so far behind that I couldn't help but be overwhelmed. That's not a good environment to be in when you have latent mutant powers. It was only a matter of time before they flared up. I wish I could say it happened during something traumatic or terrifying. That seems to be the case with a lot of other mutants. Not me though. My powers first showed up during an stupid Algebra exam._

_It wasn't some test that would have determined my future. It was just a test I didn't study enough for. I came in knowing I was behind and really stressing since it was close to midterms. I tried to stay calm, but then I actually saw the test and it all went downhill from there. I was so paralyzed I began to hyperventilate. My palms got sweaty and my head started throbbing. At first it felt like a migraine. It was like there was this pressure around me pushing down on me and I didn't know how to push back. It got worse and worse with each passing moment. I was so frustrated I didn't notice that all the metal in the room started shaking._

_Eventually, the pressure was bearing down on me so badly I had to push back. And by push, I mean I clenched my fists and outright shoved. When I did, all the metal that had been vibrating literally flung itself across the room. Since everybody's chairs were made of metal, it caught them all by surprise. The whole room turned into a scene from a ghost movie and the only one not terrified was me. When it was all over with the metal from the chairs, pens, and paperclips had converged in the center of the room right in front of me into this twisted metal ball. It was at that point it finally dawned on me. I was the one doing this. That pressure I felt wasn't a migraine. It was my powers._

_It was probably the most confused and frightened I had ever been. It could have been a lot worse if someone knew it was me, but nobody managed to connect the dots. As far as they were concerned, this was just one of those bizarre events that couldn't be explained. The only positive that came out of it was that the exam was canceled and I would get to retake it. But grades were the last thing on my mind. I had a much bigger problem to stress over._

_When I got home that day, I locked myself in my room and curled up on my bed. My mom was still at work and I had no one else to turn to. I must have laid still in a fetal position for a full hour. The whole time I kept feeling that same pressure. I didn't know what to make of it and I kept praying that it would go away. When I finally accepted that this thing wasn't going anywhere, I stood up and confronted it. I tried to be brave for once. That same adventurous spirit I had back in Paris that day hadn't completely left me. I'm glad because I needed it to get a grip on myself._

_For the next few hours I experimented. I figured out that by pushing and pulling on this pressure I could make metal move. It wasn't all that coordinated at first, but it was a start. When it erased my ipod I figured out that this was some kind of magnetism. A few internet searches later and I was convinced. I was a mutant. I didn't know how to take that. All about mutants at the time was that they were a hot button issue. People were really afraid of them and after what happened at school, I couldn't blame them._

_When my mom got home that day, I told her everything. I figured this wasn't something I could keep from her and that she would be loving and understanding like she always was. That was another bad assumption on my part. When she saw what I could do, I could literally see all the color in her face disappeared. It was like she saw Jesus himself. I don't think she said a word for a full ten minutes. She just stood there, her hand over her mouth gasping. _

_At first I was really worried. Was she really that disgusted with me? Was me being a mutant going to destroy our family? All sorts of dire outcomes went through my mind. My fears were somewhat laid to rest when my mom finally threw her arms around me and hugged me like she always did. That made everything a bit better. She also started sobbing uncontrollably._

"_My little miracle…my special little girl."_

_Again, I didn't understand and I didn't care to. I know now that my mom figured out the truth long before I did. I could have probed deeper. It would have been the perfect time to ask all these burning questions about who I was and where I came from. I'm pretty sure my mom would have told me the truth as well. I could have learned that Magneto was that father that day. My mother didn't lie to me. I just never demanded the truth. I was comfortable not knowing…too comfortable._

The old adage of ignorance being bliss crossed Lorna's mind. She scowled herself for being so weak. That was one trait neither her mother nor her father seemed to pass onto her, at least during her early years. She may have had an adventurous side, but she was weak. She avoided unpleasant truths. She tried to work around every conflict, seeking to cope rather than to resolve. It was a lousy way for any teenager to carry themselves, regardless of whether or not they were a mutant.

She could not be weak anymore. She was the daughter of Magneto and that carried with it a lot of burdens. She had to be strong to bear those burdens. In a show of such strength she raised her hand and clenched her fists, tapping the magnetic forces around her and using them to manipulate some of the rubble. In front of and around her several piles of metal levitated and gathered in a small clearing. With skill and poise that so often seemed to escape her, she intensified her powers and merged the metal into a thick, fluid-like mold. It was an impressive display of power and one she used to show only sparingly.

_The next few years could qualify as lost years for me. My mother fully accepted me being a mutant (how much Magneto had to do with that acceptance I may never know), but those overprotective instincts of hers remained pretty strong. Since she was in the business of human rights, she knew better than anyone how rough mutants had it in this world. She didn't want that life for me so she insisted that I never use my powers outside our apartment. It seemed simple enough. I didn't want to abandon all hopes for a normal life. I had no idea it would practically impossible on every conceivable level._

_Being a mutant and not using your powers is like having wings and trying not to fly. It just isn't possible. I found this out time and again. I would go to school every day feeling this pressure that nobody else was feeling. Every instinct told me to push back. Sometimes it would be as simple as reaching for a pen or something. I would start to use my powers only to mentally slap myself. I can't count how many times I came close to blowing my secret. It's nothing short of a miracle that I didn't screw it up._

_As if suppressing my powers wasn't taxing enough, I spent so much energy trying to keep myself in check that I forgot to develop my already abysmal social life. I literally had no friends. It wasn't like I didn't have the chance. It helped that I had looks going for me. As I've seen with my half-sister, Wanda, the Lensherr family is pretty generous to women when it comes to beauty. I had a few guys come up to me and flirt, but I always found somewhat to blow it. I would either freeze up or say something totally foolish that they would think I was mentally impaired or something._

_It wasn't entirely my own buffoonery that held me back. The thought of getting close to anybody and potentially revealing my mutant status always worried me to no end. My mom was adamant. Nobody could no. If I told one person, then they were going to tell someone else. Keeping a secret like that really makes it hard to relate to someone, especially if they're not a mutant. I was the only one dealing with this pressure. How could I possibly open up about it? If it weren't for the internet I probably would have stayed socially crippled._

_I needed some outlet and since my mother wouldn't let me open up to anybody at school, I did so anonymously online. There are all sorts of these mutant support groups on the web. I wasn't the only one dealing with this and it was nice being able to reach out to others. For a while my computer was my entire social life. All the social support I could ever want was right there on the internet. Well…maybe not all, but it did open the door to a new world. It was in that world that I met a very special boy named Bobby Drake._

Lorna casually swirled her hand, making a series of gestures as she directed the magnetic energy around the mold of metal. From that metal, a few shapes emerged. One in particular stood out. It was the smiling face of her first love, Bobby Drake.

The sight of his face bought a smile to her own. Bobby Drake was the lighter side of her excessively serious life. He represented a period in which she laughed and smiled more than she ever thought possible. He was the first real connection besides her mother that she ever experienced. It had a profound impact on her life and not just emotionally. Her love affair with Bobby Drake would help send her life down an exciting and dangerous new course.

_I'll never forgive my hormones for getting the better of me, even if it was worth it in the long run. At first Bobby was just this anonymous boy who I chatted with on this mutant forum. He was really funny and really flirty. He also happened to give some pretty good advice when it came to dealing with mutant powers. I enjoyed talking to him so much that I started structuring my whole afternoons around him. It was only a matter of time before deeper emotions crept in._

_It started when he forwarded me a picture of himself, revealing that he was Iceman from the X-men. That came as a huge shocker for me and it got me a little overly excited. I was so excited I forgot my mom's rule about telling others my secret and sent him a picture of myself. I still have to stop myself from laughing every time I remember his reaction. He later describes it as scientific proof that the internet isn't all mindless fantasy._

_Chatting online soon turned to phone calls. Phone calls eventually turned into a meeting. That meeting then turned to an all out relationship. It happened fast, but nowhere near as fast as I wanted it to be. There was so much I had missed out on being this socially isolated misfit. Bobby did more than anyone else to bring me up to speed and to say it was exhilarating would be a gross understatement. Being with him released all these pent up emotions that I had never been able to express. For what he did for me and everything he helped me with, I couldn't help but fall in love with him._

_When my mom found out about my little online romance, she was pretty upset at first. Then I told her that this was an X-man. Bobby was the kind of guy who understood what I was going through, not just as a mutant but as a teenage girl in general. I think my mom would have been more upset if it had been anyone else, mutant or non-mutant. I also think she was starting to feel her illness creep in because she didn't put as much energy into overprotecting me as she used to. I think she really wanted me to have some an emotional connection with someone other than her. Again, I didn't understand her reasons and didn't care to. All that mattered to me was having a relationship and being able to enjoy it as any normal teenage girl would, even if normal was a relative term._

_For the most part, Bobby and I shared a romance that you could probably write a few books about. He was the hero and I was the adventurous girl looking to break out of my shell. He showed me how to be stronger than I had been up to that point. He showed me how to embrace my powers and not think of them as a burden. He also showed me the joys of intimacy. Being young hormonal teenagers, it was bound to happen and I'm glad it did. It allowed me to truly feel something special with this boy. _

_Oddly enough, my mom was okay with it. I know that's pretty strange because most mothers cringe at the thought of their little girl lying naked in a bed with another boy. But my mom wasn't most mothers. She had her reasons and even though I rarely questioned them, the truth was bound to come out sooner or later. Once it began, my world began to crumble._

Lorna clenched her fist again. Another round of tension came over her. This time it wasn't just frustration that consumed her. Anger was the dominant feeling for once. In most respects she was not an angry kind of person, even with her father's temperament being the stuff of legend. It was only when that painful sense of helplessness consumed her that the rage built up inside her.

With her powers, she changed the shape of the metal once more. This time she formed two faces instead of one. They were the faces of her half-siblings, Wanda and Pietro. They were an inescapable part of her life now. For a time, they were the bane of her existence because they set the stage for the horrors she would face.

_In one night my world started spinning out of control. While I was on a date with Bobby, my long lost half-siblings paid me a visit. They didn't send an invitation or anything. They just dropped right in and started ruining my life. They didn't do it with their powers or with some exotic form of mind control. They didn't have to. They had something much more potent on their side…the truth._

_Somehow, the figured out that my mother was very sick before I did. I'm guessing they stole her hospital records, but whatever they did it turned my world inside out and upside down. Even though Bobby rescued me from being harassed more than I cared to be, the secret was out. Suddenly, my life wasn't just a struggle to accept who I was. Now it was a struggle to cope with the possibility of losing my mother._

_The night after that date, my mother came clean. She told me she had cancer and had been trying desperately to get it treated. But things were shaky at her job because her illness made it impossible for her to travel. If she got fired then we would lose our health insurance and if we lost that, she would have no hope. I cried myself to sleep every night after that, agonizing over the idea that my mother may one night go to sleep and not wake up. Even Bobby couldn't help me with this. His solution was for me to join the X-men and have Xavier provide for her. He even helped me come up with my codename, Polaris._

_But I was in no position to start playing hero. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with my mother. I couldn't divide my responsibilities to the X-men and her. Bobby understood even if he didn't like it. I would be lying if I said I didn't give the X-men serious consideration, but then something else happened that I didn't expect._

_First, my mother lost her job. It was just as we feared. Now her health was in worse shape than ever. At first I scrambled to help out. I was prepared to drop out of school and get a job that had insurance. That was sure to be an unpleasant process from the very beginning. For a few days I came within seconds of calling up Charles Xavier and asking for his help. Then my darling siblings came to me again. They said they could help my mother if only I helped them. I was in a bad position. I should have known better than to take their word for it. But I was so desperate I wasn't thinking straight. The promise of a treatment that could stop my mother's suffering was too great to ignore._

_So with that decision, Polaris was officially in business. I joined Wanda, Pietro, and Magneto in his uprising. That's where I finally learned the next round of unpleasant truths. The secret of my heritage had come out. Magneto, the man Bobby described as a mutant version of Lex Luther, was my father._

_It filled in a lot of missing pieces that I had been contemplating for years. It explained why my mother was so overprotective of me. She was afraid I would fall into the same habits that he did. Then when my powers emerged, she was afraid he would come after me. She had seen first hand how he became such a tyrant. She didn't want that to be part of my life. In terms of reasons, my mom had some pretty damn good ones for being the kind of parent she was. By that same token, I had some pretty lousy reasons for going along with him in the beginning._

Anger gave way to bitterness as Lorna closed her eyes and swallowed a hard lump of emotion. Growing up without a father, it was always tempting to seek the truth. Few girls ever had to deal with finding out that their father was a mutant supremacist who sought to overthrow humanity and establish a mutant-led rule upon the world. She was still a teenage girl. How could she ever hope to wrap her head around that?

The mold of metal changed shape again under her swirling magnetic powers. This time it formed an oversized depiction of Magneto's head. Just looking into his eyes was enough to make Lorna tense with a wide range of inner conflicts. Some of these conflicts came close to literally and figuratively destroying the world around her.

_I took part in his uprising on Genosha because he promised to provide special treatment for my mother. That almost came back to haunt me because Magneto never planned to leave the world intact. He was going to destroy every trace of human authority on that day. I was lucky the X-men stopped him. I should have gone to them first. They went above and beyond for me even after I screwed them over._

_But their kindness only went so far. Sure, Charles Xavier swept some of my problems away with his money. He paid to move me and my mom to this nice house in Westchester that was near this fancy hospital where my mother could get treatment. I didn't even have to drop out of school. I still got to be a teenage girl. My relationship with Bobby even got stronger for a while because he lived so close by and we could get together more often. It didn't bother him that I was the daughter of his greatest enemy. Hell, I think that kind of thrilled him, knowing he was with a girl who escaped the sinister habits of her father. I know now that that everything was held together with gum and scotch tape. It was going to fall apart eventually and it came sooner rather than later._

_It turns out those expensive treatments Xavier paid weren't enough. My mother's cancer was getting worse and the doctors weren't confident she would make it more than a few months. So once again I got desperate. I couldn't deal with the idea of my mother dying. I trusted in the X-men and they couldn't do anything about it. So when Pietro came to me again with the chance to save my mother, I trusted him again. Only this time, I wasn't going to be as foolish._

_I wanted to save my mother. At the same time I wanted to get close to Magneto again because I knew that if he was planning something, I had to be in a position to stop him. I got to be a hero after all and I didn't need to join the X-men to do it. I admit I didn't have an elaborate plan to go on. I was basically throwing myself into the conflict and hoping for the best. My intent was to stop Magneto and save my mother. I only ended up accomplishing one of those goals._

_It's not like I didn't have a chance. Magneto managed to fly my mother to Genosha in one of those transport orbs of his. He had a mutant with healing powers on standby who was supposed to be powerful enough to buy her time if not save her completely. I thought I could make everything better. I would stop Magneto and save my mom all at once. There was just one little detail I didn't count on._

Lorna had to swallow another hard lump in her throat. This time there was nothing mixed about her emotions. It was pure, untainted sorrow. Without even thinking, her powers changed the mold again. Now the face in the metal resembled her mother. It was a sight that still brought tears to her eyes. This woman didn't just give her life. She gave her strength. She had mutant powers going for her while her mother was dying of cancer yet still, she showed a kind of strength that would make any hardened hero envious.

_She refused the treatment. My mother…she would rather die than compromise what was right. I couldn't believe it. I was going above and beyond to save her life, but she refused to let me continue. I was two parts sad and ten parts angry. I thought I was doing the right thing for her and for the world. She proved me wrong. In a ways she gave me the strength to succeed that I never would have known otherwise._

_She told me about my father. She told me what happened to him. My mother knew before I even did anything that my plan to stop him would fail. There was no way I could defeat this man in a confrontation. He was just too full of hatred and anger. I couldn't fight him as Polaris. I had to fight him as a daughter. So I did. I trusted my mother one last time and in doing so I may have saved the world._

_I got through to my father using both my powers and my heart. I stopped his machine before he could wipe the world clean of humanity. I then stopped his endless rage, appealing to that fading heart that my mother had once captured years ago. The X-men did the rest. Magneto's spree of anger and hate had finally stopped. I succeeded in one goal, but I was never going to succeed in the other._

_A few days later, my mother passed away. I was by her beside the whole time. I didn't pressure her to accept the treatment. I didn't beg her to hold on any longer than she needed to. Even my father came by and made his peace with her. When she slipped away, it was like a piece of my heart died with her. I cried and I mourned. But I would not live in despair._

_My mother had done her part. She was smiling until her final moments, saying she could die happily knowing she did everything she could for me. I was her crowning achievement. I was her gift to this world. Now she couldn't be overprotective anymore. I had to rely on the strength she imparted to me and find my own place in the world. That place was going to stay with my family though. Despite what my better judgment was telling me, my life would be with Magneto and my siblings. It wasn't going to be with the X-men._

_It was a rough transition to say the least. My relationship with Bobby ended on the spot. All hopes for a normal life were completely out the window. My life was going to be forged in this conflict between humans and mutants. So long as my father and the rest of my family were part of this struggle, I was going to be part of it as well._

_My responsibilities couldn't be greater. I had to be my father's little angel, appearing on the other side of his shoulder whenever those old voices of hatred and anger tried to influence him. I managed to wean him off the warpath he had been on for decades. I got him to focus on making a better life for mutants here on Genosha where we could live and be free. My mother's lessons in human rights were paying off. We could make the world better for mutants without resorting to war._

_I thought I was doing a decent enough job. Genosha may have been on fragile grounds politically, but it was still a stable environment for mutants everywhere. Magneto was a solid leader. He brought the country together and gave a sense of identity to all the mutants who came here looking to escape the conflict that was engulfing the rest of the world. I thought that would be enough. We could work out all the politics with time. Even though my mother had taught me to pitfalls of those foolish assumptions time and again, old habits die hard. My father was just too ambitious. It took only one mistake on his part to destroy everything we had accomplish._

Sorrow gave way to bitterness. Lorna lowered her hand, ceasing her random manipulations of the metal mold before her. She no longer had the energy to stare at the faces of the past. They were harsh reminders that for all the strength she gained from her mother and her family, she still wasn't strong enough when it mattered most.

_I should have seen the signs. The adjustments on Genosha weren't without conflicts. There was that alien ship my father suddenly became so obsessed with. Then there were those raids from the naval blockade he tried to turn into an international incident. I even stood by and helped while he tried to turn Senator Kelly and his family into mutants. I thought by going along with him I wouldn't lose his trust. If my mom were still alive she would have been disgusted by my efforts._

_But all those shortcomings paled in comparison to what happened with the Cambrian. Here was something that even Magneto didn't fully understand. It should have been a red flag whenever he said that this creature or whatever it was would help mutants evolve beyond their limits. I thought that meant it would make life easier for struggling mutants whose powers were difficult to handle. I had no idea that he would end up unleashing such a horrific monstrosity on this world. He didn't know either and because of our collective ignorance, we all paid a high price._

_The Cambrian turned him into a monster. Then it tried to turn every mutant on the planet into monsters. It almost succeeded too. It took both the X-men and the Brotherhood to save the world this time. I was part of the attack and I saw first with my own eyes how this creature was feeding off Magneto's burning hatred. Even thought I had reached his heart enough to stop the asteroid, I was not strong enough. His hatred was much stronger and because of that he gave in. Even after the Cambrian was defeated, the damage was done._

_Now he's holding up in some room, staring blankly at a wall with a less-than-coherent mind. Charles Xavier worked with some of our doctors to help him. The prognosis isn't good. Even though physically he's okay, the Cambrian exacted some serious mental strain. His mind is…chaotic for lack of a better word. He's showing symptoms of psychosis, hallucinations, and withdrawal. As if my father wasn't unstable enough, now he may never be the same man again._

_That leaves me with a dangerously demented father on an island that is under more scrutiny than ever. Because of my father's actions, mutant relations may be set back indefinitely. Wanda, Pietro, and the X-men have already had a hell of a time trying to stop an all out war from breaking out. The harder they have to work the more I'm reminded that I'm partially to blame as well. My father was my responsibility. I was supposed to be able to get through to him when no one else could. I should have been able to do that and stop the Cambrian before it started. Now it's too late._

Another cold wind blew across the ruins of the citadel. More shivers consumed the young mutant. This time she did not hug herself for warmth. She tried to brave the cold. She tried to be strong. It was her strength that was the key to everything that had transpired. What she lacked may have cost her father and this island dearly, but the world wasn't in ruin yet. That meant there was still time for her to stand up and face this conflict.

_So where does that leave me? I failed my father and my friends, but we're all still breathing. Right now we have militaries from all over the world occupying Genosha to help clean up from the Cambrian. The X-men are working overtime to prevent the United States government from taking more drastic measures against mutants. Wanda and the rest of the Brotherhood are trying to re-establish a working government. The world hasn't come crashing down on us yet. There may still be hope._

_I know I can't run away from this. A part of me wants to get off this island, change my name, dye my hair, and start over in some remote part of the world. But I'm not going to do that. I'm stronger than that. I have to be. My mother once said that when people stop fighting for a just world than an injust one is always waiting in the wings. I'll find a way to make this better. I'll become stronger or die trying. I refuse to believe my father is beyond hope. I refuse to believe our cause is beyond salvaging. _

_I'm still finding my way around here. I'm slowly but surely learning to be a fighter. When I was dating Bobby, he always said I had the spirit of someone who could make a big difference in the world. I haven't proven him wrong yet and I don't intend to. Men like my father are dangerous to leave alone and embittered. That's why people like me have to be strong enough to reach these tortured souls. If that's the role I have to play in order to preserve the fragile good in this world, so be it._

Lorna gathered herself in the midst of the cold winds and narrowed her gaze on the mold of mangled metal in front of her. Raising her hand, she used her powers to distort the metal into a new shape. This time it was something small and simple. It wasn't a face or some image from the past. Instead, it was a symbol of sorts for her role in this crazy affair.

From the metal, a perfect replica of Magneto's element emerged. Once it was fully formed she directed it towards her and took it in her hands. Clenching it tightly, she looked upon it with conflict and anxiety. Lorna had a lot riding on her shoulders and she was anything but ready.

"Lorna! Hey Lorna, are you out here?" came an unexpected voice in the distance.

Lorna so startled she almost dropped the helmet. She instinctively turned around to see Alex Summers, one of the Brotherhood's newest members and de-facto leader, approach her.

"Havok…" she said in confusion.

"It's past midnight in a mountain of rubble. I think we can dispense with the codenames," he said as he approached her.

His usual authoritative voice waned, sounding less like a leader and more like a concerned friend. Something about that made Lorna smile.

"So are you going to tell me what you're doing out here or am I going to have to give Wanda even more reasons to stress out?" asked Alex.

"I could," she stated flatly, "But I don't know if I have the energy."

"Don't have the energy as in it's too hard or don't have the energy because…"

"Whatever you're about to say, Alex…I'll assume it's more accurate," said Lorna, "And if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not go into details."

Alex looked at her strangely and then down at the helmet she was holding. To Lorna's surprise, a strange look of understanding came over him.

"In that case, I'll head back and tell Wanda you were just out on a walk," said Alex.

"Thanks," she said with a smile, "You don't have to tell her immediately though."

"Now why would I want to test the patience of someone who can hex me so my insides turn to lit napalm?"

"Because I could use some company right now," said Lorna, directing her gaze at the helmet as well, "If you're worried about my half-sister's temper, let me deal with it. I owe you as such."

Alex smiled back and fell silent, indicating he was not going anywhere. His presence was comforting. He was just what she needed during a difficult time like this. He stood by her while she clenched the replica of her father's helmet, reminding her that she was not alone in bearing this burden.

Despite Lorna's numerous shortcomings, she was prepared to move forward. It was part of her burden and part of her legacy. She was Lorna, the daughter of Magneto. For all the complications it brought her, this struggle was part of who she was. She accepted that now and until the very end, whichever form it may take.

* * *

**Up next: Wanda Maximoff  
**


	5. Wanda Maximoff

**Supreme Reflections  
Wanda Maximoff**

* * *

**Wanda's Reflections (AN: Takes place after issue 96)**

_I am often described by others as a daddy's girl. I'm not entirely sure what that term entails. I don't know if it's some American slang I don't yet understand or if it's meant to be an insult. If it simply implies that I am too much like my father, then I suppose that would be insulting. Magneto's track record as of late has made him someone that few would want to be associated with in any way. Most mutants have the luxury of distancing themselves from this man. They can play the ignorance card and claim they never went along with his plans to begin with. I do not have that luxury. Magneto is my father and I am his daughter. As such, I'm trapped under his shadows and stuck with his burdens._

Wanda Maximoff had once again been crowned as the de-facto ruler of Genosha. Magneto had left, disappearing without a trace in wake of the Warlock affair. Having already tainted his legacy and his credibility with the Cambrian fiasco, he saw fit to take an impromptu vacation of sorts. For many, it was good riddance. For Wanda, it was another mess that she was obligated to clean up.

In the freshly rebuilt citadel (courtesy of Warlock), Wanda secluded herself in the throne room. It looked exactly as it had before the Cambrian destroyed it. Everything was in place, bearing the distinct metallic style her father employed in every environment he created for himself. It was often cold and callous, a fitting reflection of the complicated man that had done so much to thrust the world into chaos. Staring at the throne her father once sat in, Wanda tensed through a vast breadth of bitter emotions.

_I never asked for this responsibility, nor do I welcome it for a second time. It seems I'm always left cleaning up the messes wrought by my family. It seems I'm the only one equipped to do so since Pietro is a study in perpetual immaturity and Lorna is just a teenage girl still developing her own identity. That doesn't mean I'm equipped to handle such a task. I've never seen myself as a leader or a visionary. I've always been a mere follower, fighting for a cause that I believed to be for the benefit of myself and all our fellow mutants._

_No matter how I see myself, I've never been completely together as they say. My life purpose has always been chaotic, which I suppose is fitting given the nature of my powers. I can reach out and touch chaos with my being and guide it to a certain outcome, no matter how unlikely that outcome may be. Yet it's the chaos I can't control that leaves me the most frustrated. To make it worse, I rarely had anyone to lean on for support. I've had to hold it together on my own. Sometimes I wonder if I would be stronger if I had still had a mother figure in my life to guide me._

_It is tragic how I lost that opportunity before I even had a chance to do something about it. My biological mother was dead shortly after I was born. My father rarely talks about her. I sense this is because it's so difficult and he doesn't like to show weakness of any kind. I don't see it as weak to show that you're capable of loving someone so deeply, but given how my mother was taken from us I can't entirely blame my father for being so dispassionate about it. If I had been there I may very well have ended up the same way._

_My father didn't spare me the details. He told me and Pietro at a young age that our mother was horribly murdered by a pack of so-called rebel soldier who for whatever reason saw fit to raze a town to ashes. She and my father had been traveling with Charles Xavier through the Balkans, looking to make a positive impact on war torn areas of the world. My father was more interested in studying human conflict, but he had a less pessimistic view at the time. I attribute that to my mother's influence. While Magneto never says it, I can tell he really loved her and that she brought out in him a sense of vulnerability. I suppose that vulnerability was taken full advantage of when those soldiers attacked because by murdering my mother, they sent my father down a very dark path._

_It may very well have been worse if Pietro and I had perished as well. Our mother had been pregnant at the time of the attack. She was badly wounded, but she held on long enough to get to a remote hospital where she could give birth. As soon as Pietro and I entered the world, Madga Maximoff left and took with her any hope of a peaceful life for myself and the rest of our family._

More conflicted feelings consumed the young woman. It was a daunting notion on the surface, having known nothing but conflict since the moment she was born. There was never a time in Wanda Maximoff's life when she wasn't part of this chaos. It was hard to blame her mother for everything. It was also hard to feel the same anguish her father endured because she didn't get a chance to know her mother. If she had then perhaps she would feel different about how Magneto brought her and Pietro into his world.

_The real irony is that no matter how hard I try, I cannot contemplate any other life than the one I have known. From the moment I've been able to form coherent memories, my father has been preparing me and my brother for conflict. It was not the most affectionate form of parenting. Yet at no point did I doubt that Magneto loved us. Even now I know he believed he was doing what was best for us._

_However, in raising us like this we were kept isolated from the rest of the corrupt world that Magneto so despised. For the first few years of my life, he raised me and my brother in some remote area of the Balkans. I don't have many memories of what it was like, but I do remember that it was a harsh environment that required me and my brother to be strong. We had to brave cold, hunger, and discomfort of all kinds. This was Magneto's way of getting us ready for the world we were destined to oppose._

_Then when I was about five, he moved me and Pietro to this secluded town in Switzerland. It was here where we would do the most of our growing up. Magneto entrusted us to the only relative my mother had, her sister Marya Maximoff. She was a lot different than Magneto in the sense she was more gentle and affectionate. That didn't mean she was weak though. She was more of a hermit who had a very cynical view on the outside world. One of her favorite sayings was that humanity is going to destroy the world sooner or later. If we can't stop it, we might as well sit back and enjoy the fireworks._

_I'm not sure if her pessimism was a result of being anti-social by nature, but I do believe the death of her sister played a part. I could tell at a young age that she was deeply scarred by her loss. As such, she took to raising us as if Pietro and I were her own children. My father claimed he had some planning to do and needed us to be safe while he put everything together. Marya listened to him and I get the sense she knew to some extent what he was up to. It essentially made my role in this mess an inevitability._

_Even if that was the case, I certainly wasn't aware enough to prepare myself for it. I just lived my life day-to-day. Life in Switzerland was pretty basic. Pietro and I spent most of our time in Marya's secluded cabin. She home schooled us from a young age and we rarely ventured into the nearby down that was just a few miles from the house. When we did we were always instructed to not associate with anybody. I listened and obeyed while my brother was a lot more obnoxious. For most of my childhood he provided most of my entertainment and frustration. He adopted Marya's cynicism, but not her discipline. She always said he would grow out of it, but I'm still waiting for that to happen._

_Over the years this secluded life was all we knew. It was hard and arduous. We had to cook our own food, chop our own firewood, and maintain our own home. Nothing was ever given to us. We had to earn it. Most wouldn't call that a normal upbringing. Most wouldn't call it extraordinary either. But there was one minor detail that set my life apart from that of most every other human._

_Marya Maximoff was not a mutant, but she wasn't completely human either. My mother was the same way. They had something that set themselves apart from humanity…something unique that could not fit into a normal society. When I was eight Marya told me all about it. She revealed that my mother was a traveling mystic. She was very talented in the mystic arts and she often used those arts to make a difference. She would travel to war zones and heal the sick and dying. Sometimes she would also use those powers to curse the aggressors. There was this one story Marya told me about involving a soldier responsible for raping numerous women during the warpath. When my mother found him, she put a curse on him that caused him to become blind, impotent, and paralyzed. It was harsh, but that was how she made a difference._

_After learning these secrets, Marya revealed that she too was talented in the mystic arts. In fact, many Maximoffs throughout history were mystically inclined. She claimed to be nowhere near as skilled as my mother, but she still pulled off some pretty impressive feats. Instead of watching television, Marya would treat me and Pietro to these mystical demonstrations. Pietro wasn't always that thrilled, but this power fascinated me. It made me want to learn more. It seemed appropriate that I would carry on my mother's legacy as a mystic. However, my father had other ideas._

Wanda looked down at her hands and concentrated. In a brilliant display of reddish purple light, she formed two balls of hexing energy. This energy bore some resemblance to the mystical feats she saw Marya perform, but hers were not mystical in nature. They were a product of her mutation. This was what would be the driving force in her life. Her powers were her world. Even though she had come to accept that, it was not her choice to be part of this world. That decision was made for her by Magneto.

_Over the years, Magneto paid regular visits to me and Marya. During that time he strongly discouraged me from learning too much about the mystic arts. He said I had another destiny ahead of me. I didn't understand it and me being the immature child I was, I often argued with him. But he was my father and I was his daughter. I still instinctively trusted his authority. There was nothing I could do to change what happened._

_It all came together during one special visit he made shortly after Pietro and I turned 15. It was in the middle of this nasty winter storm when he came barging in unexpectedly an hour before midnight. He had with him this weird looking machine that seemed like a cross between a toaster oven and a bomb. It didn't look like anything I had ever seen before. Hell, it didn't even look man-made. It could have been alien for all I know and after this whole Shi'ar debacle, it probably was. _

_Wherever this machine came from, my father was very excited about it. He said it would unlock our mutant potential. Seeing as how Pietro and I were the product of a high level mutant and a mystic, it was almost a given we would have powers of a certain level. We expected it to happen naturally like it did with all mutants, but that wasn't soon enough for Magneto. He needed us to manifest our powers now and like the obedient children we were, we listened to him._

_At the stroke of midnight he sat us down in the living room in front of a roaring fire. He then placed this machine between me and Pietro and told us to put our hands on it. I was pretty anxious and I'm sure Pietro was as well, even if he tried to keep with his tough-guy persona. But we did as we were told. We touched the machine and as soon as it happened, something amazing happened._

_It started with a flash. This blinding blue light shot out from the machine and filled the room. For a second it felt like I was being burned on every inch of my skin. For another second it felt like I was being filled with this strange new energy. It was invigorating and painful at the same time. It lasted all but fifteen seconds. To me it felt like a lifetime. When it was over, the light faded and the machine went completely dark. My father didn't even give us time to recover. He told us to stand up and face him. Apparently, he already knew what our powers would be ahead of time and for the next few years we would learn how to use them._

_Pietro's powers were easy enough. Being super fast fit nicely into his act-impulsively-and think-only-after-he's-been-sufficiently-yelled-at persona. Within weeks he was running all around the countryside, having fun and getting into trouble wherever he could and getting away with it because of his speed. It took me a lot longer to master my powers because they involved something a lot more exotic._

_I still don't remember even half of the details my father explained. Somehow, my powers were related to quantum probability alterations. I must have missed the part where Marya home schooled me in quantum physics, but in a nutshell it meant I could alter probabilities through these special hexing bursts. When I first tried to use them, it was a disaster. I actually hit the chair Marya was sitting in and caused it to shatter. _

_I only got the hang of them through a long series of trial and error. Marya was a big help, using her mystical talents to guide me along. It wasn't the same as learning the mystic arts, but I still came to embrace them. Marya even hinted at times that my powers were close enough to magic to be thought of as such. I'm not sure how serious she was, given she was such an expert when it came to subtle sarcasm. For all I know part of my powers are driven by magic. Even if they were, me being a mutant sent my life down a new path. Once again, it was a path my father would forge for me._

The shadow of her father's presence still lingered. His throne room was thick with his presence. It brought out every conflicted feeling she ever felt for this man. Father or no father, he was the guiding force in her life. He set her up for many of the triumphs and tragedies that would consume her. Whether it was intentional or for her genuine benefit, Magneto made sure she shared in his bitterness for the world.

Walking up to the throne, Wanda trailed her hands along the vacant seat. Like everything else in the citadel, it was made of metal. The fine metallic feeling was cold yet ordered, a perfect reflection of Magneto and the way he carried himself. Even now, it was hard to be completely put off by such a harsh personality because in some ways she shared those defining traits. The seeds of this feeling were sewn in the first plan of her father's that she ever took part in.

_As soon as Pietro and I had mastered our powers to a certain point, it was time for us to escape the confines of our tiny Swiss home. My father wanted us to see the world as he had seen it. He wanted to show us first hand why he resented the human race so much. To do this he sent me and Pietro to war zones similar to the ones he used to visit when he was with Charles Xavier and my mother. He took Pietro to some hot zones in the Middle East while he sent me to the Turkish boarders of Eastern Europe with Marya. It was here where we got our first taste of the human condition and it didn't take long for both of us to lose our appetites._

_I traveled with Marya under the guise of a student looking to document the ethnic violence that had been raging in the area for decades. I knew it was going to be bad, but I had no idea it would be so horrendous. Even in my worst nightmares, I couldn't imagine such horrors. I watched rival militias clash with one another and senselessly slaughter everything in their path. It was wholesale barbarism, watching these men act like animals as they killed each other with this venomous hatred in their eyes that looked more animal than man. I saw piles of dead bodies. I watched men rape women and slaughter children in front of their own mothers. I tried to understand where all this hatred was coming from. There were historical, cultural, and religious undertones to the conflict. But that didn't make it any more meaningful. If anything, it gave me more reasons to share my father's pessimism of the human condition._

_I didn't lose hope entirely. For a while I actually tried to help. Whenever I saw some militias on the move, I used my powers to destroy their guns and their equipment. It only delayed the violence. I never stopped it. The peace was always temporary. Pretty soon more violence would break out. At one point I grabbed someone aside and asked them about it. He was this young militiaman who wasn't much older than I was. I used my powers to practically choke an answer out of him. His only response was that these people were a plague on their lands. He was just wiping them clean of pests._

_That sent a powerful message to me about humanity. These men were not all that different form one another. They didn't have powers or look radically different. Yet they were able to look down at each other the same way they look down at a bug. It was disgusting. I literally felt ill when I heard this. For a while I refused to believe that mankind was this barbaric. I gave them one too many chances to redeem themselves. All they did was give me more reasons to accept that my father had been right all along._

_The final blow came on a foggy morning in this apartment complex that Marya and I were staying in. It was right near the edge of the conflict and we knew it was a dangerous place to be in. I probably shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when terrorists stormed the complex and took a series of hostages. I had to get over that surprise quickly and put a stop to this conflict. I wasn't about to let it catch me in it's crosshairs. I also had to protect Marya. As good a mystic as she was, magic could only do so much against a hail of bullets. I tried to use my powers to spare her and these people such bloodshed. In doing so I saw humanity seal it's fate._

_I can still hear the footsteps of the men storming towards are floor. Marya and I helped barricade the other residents at the end of the hall. I then led her to the fire escape where I was going to help her get out while I stuck around and used my powers against the militia. I covered her as best I could, making my way through the halls and towards the elevators. Along the way I ran into six armed men looking for more hostages. I destroyed their guns and hexed them into unconsciousness without incident. I tried not to be too harsh. I wasn't about to end up like them. That turned out to be a mistake._

_One of the men I hexed wasn't hit hard enough. While I was clearing out the other halls, he came too and crawled towards the barricades. Along the way he ran into Marya trying to escape. When he saw her, he attacked and caught her by surprise. Marya never had a chance to do a spell or anything. The man put a knife into her back before she could get the words out. When she screamed out, it was like someone ripping into my very soul. I immediately forgot all notions of mercy and understanding. I took out three more militiamen permanently as I went after Marya. By the time I reached her I was too late._

_I'll never forget the look on her face. It was still as cynical as ever, only now it was etched with a pain like no other. I saw the blood gushing from her neck. The man had slit her throat so she had no hope of survival. Before she drew her last breath, she said something to me with her eyes. It was the equivalent of saying "I told you so" without words. All those negative views on humanity and the world around her seemed vindicated at that very moment along with my father's. I don't remember much about what I did next, but that man who killed her got the hexing of a dozen lifetimes. I made sure he suffered for what he did. He didn't just take part of my family. He took with him in his final moments of agonizing pain the last vestiges of hope I had for humanity._

_Father had made his point. Now I understood completely. He was right all along. Humanity is a lost cause. Their hatred, cruelty, and bigotry will never cease. Thousands of years of evolution and they're still savage cavemen. They refused to evolve and in doing so they were only causing more suffering. Something had to be done. My father wanted to do something about it and now I was ready to help him_

Wanda removed her hands from the throne and fell back into her daze. The cause she fought for was a cause her father convinced her to be worthwhile. She still believed in that cause. She saw herself as fighting for the cause of protecting mutants from human oppression and confronting those who would do their kind harm. Yet in following her father, it led her to so much struggle and frustration. Was that because of the cause itself or because of how her father went about it?

_After we laid Marya to rest, I met up with Pietro. Apparently, his visit to the Middle East had been somewhat traumatic as well. We were both teenagers yet we had to grow up much faster than we expected. We had to in order to become part of father's struggle. He said to us that he needed our efforts to supplement his own. He could not oppose humanity by himself. He wanted to do so as a family. I believed him without question and so did Pietro. In the years that followed, we continued to believe him even when there were signs that we should have done at least a little questioning._

_During those early years, most of our efforts were spent on sabotage and acquiring resources for Magneto's plan. He enlisted the help of the shape-shifting Mystique to give us a steady stream of intelligence regarding human affairs. There were never any shortages of radical elements in the anti-mutant debate, which by now was becoming a global issue. These were the people we often attacked. It wasn't just to spite them either. We often plundered their resources, be they financial or material. It was father's way of taking resources from our enemies and using them to supplement our own. It was quite lucrative at first, although it wasn't without obstacles._

_Around the same time when we were beginning our operations, the X-men were making our position a lot more difficult to hold. Charles Xavier seemed intent on making a difference as well, only he wasn't about opposing humanity directly. He wanted to protect them. He and his X-men dressed up in costumes, wore masks, and fought crime as costumed vigilantes. At first I thought it was just a joke, but they had a genuine impact on our cause. Suddenly, mutants weren't monsters in the eyes of some humans. The tide that was growing against us was stalling. Magneto scoffed at Xavier's efforts, but I had my concerns. I kept them to myself though. I still trusted in my father's mission._

_Pretty soon we started clashing with the X-men. Whenever we went after some fairly major anti-mutant groups, they often came to stand in our way. I resented them for doing so, thinking them to be naïve and misguided. I underestimated their resolve. They knew how to fight. We failed in a number of missions because of them. It set the stage for an increasingly bitter rivalry between Magneto and Charles Xavier. Pietro and I saw them as fools. I hated them because they hadn't seen the horrors I saw. They hadn't realized what I had come to realize. I thought that once they saw the depths of human barbarism, they would change their views. It was here where my blind faith started to crack a little._

_I remember this one particular mission above all the others. This anti-mutant group had allied themselves with these Mexican drug cartels. They had a stronghold not far from the boarder of Guatemala where they stockpiled weapons and materials. If that wasn't bad enough, this group often let the cartels pay them in mutant prisoners. What they would do is capture some poor mutant, bring them to the group, and then they were torture him or her in a way so horrible it makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it. Not only that, they documented it and used it as propaganda. My father obviously wanted them taken care of so we planned to attack. The X-men were right there waiting for us._

_They managed to infiltrate the complex before we did. They arrived just in time to see five of these monsters savagely torturing this crying 17-year-old mutant girl. They had beaten, bruised, and raped her. It was such a horrendous sight I would have thought anyone with any sense of sanity would take those men down and send them to hell where they belonged. The X-men didn't do that. They saved the girl and subdued the men, but they did not kill them. I know because Pietro and I were involved in sabotaging their weapons stockpile. We were then supposed to go after the leaders. But the X-men caught them already. I tried to take them down, but I was stopped. I was so enraged that they would protect these monsters I was ready to kill them if they didn't let me. That's when one of those men spoke up and I'll never forget what he said._

"_You're calling US monsters? We're just doing what you would do to us! If we're the monsters, we have you to thank!"_

_That hit me in a way I didn't expect. For the first time I stepped back and looked at what I was doing and what my father was doing. These men were miserable excuses for human beings, just like the militiamen who killed Marya and my mother. Yet here I was with my family, attacking them and giving them all sorts of reasons to keep doing what they were doing. It led me to wonder whether we were just caught up in a brutal cycle. The more we fought, the more the humans fought back. Maybe we're the ones fueling this hatred. Maybe we weren't going about this cause the right way._

_I tried voicing my concerns to my father. He brushed them off as he did so many other things. He didn't even bother to think about it. I saw in his eyes so much hatred that had built up over the years. There was no reason for him to think. I still had reasons I couldn't escape. It would linger with me as we kept struggling._

_From this point on I continued to fight by my father's side, but never without this small sliver of doubt in the back of my head. I still believed what we were fighting for. I just wasn't convinced father's plan would succeed completely. Pietro didn't share my concerns. He brushed it off just like Magneto. Like father like son indeed. I now felt the burden of being the only one doing any thinking in this family. Therefore, I had to be the responsible one. That took on a new level of importance once the Brotherhood was formed. _

Wanda scowled towards the throne and turned away in a fit of bitterness. Now the full weight of the burden was falling upon her. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that she was the only one willing to bear it. Nobody else had the sense or the foresight to do so. Even when Magneto brought in more manpower, she was left to do all the thinking that nobody else was willing to do.

_After years of acquiring resources, father's plans were finally coming together. We had our core of mutants with which to launch our uprising. For years Magneto talked about establishing a battlefront with which to begin the war against humanity. It had to start somewhere. They had to have a place where the mutants of the world could gather and stand as one against their oppressors. That's how all great revolutions began and for this act, he chose Genosha._

_I couldn't think of a better location. This cursed island has been the scene of many wars and uprisings. For most of the century it was run by brutal dictators and Cameron Hodge was no exception. What set him apart from the others was that he used mutants as the scapegoat to rally his supporters. To my father he was the equivalent of another Hitler, looking to inflict a second holocaust on our kind. We weren't about to let that happen. We were ready to oppose him. However, the revolution he hoped to launch did not have the outcome he or anyone for that matter expected._

_Once again, the X-men intervened. Their participation changed everything. They stopped Magneto from inciting the war. They stopped what could have been an outright slaughter between our forces and Genosha's. On top of it all, Pietro had been wounded in the crossfire and in that instant those slivers of doubt became full fledged cracks. Then after I found out that Cameron Hodge was just using our cause to further his own, which had nothing to do with mutants, that revealed to me an uncomfortable truth._

_This wasn't working. Father's plan was not going to help our cause. He was wrong. We weren't going to help our brethren by starting a war that was founded in lies. I was left to make the ultimate decision. I had the power to stop the fighting before it got out of hand. So I made the decision that put me in the position I'm in now. I listened to the X-men. I made my own plan for my father's cause. I'm not sure if it was entirely right, but I know it wasn't entirely wrong._

_We all paid a high price. We all had to realize that Hodge used us and we were doing nothing more than serving the interests of the anti-mutant bigots who were just looking for more reasons to hate us. We had to be better. We had to be stronger. That's why I was so enamored by the idea of turning Genosha into a mutant haven. It seemed more fitting. Instead of making it the front lines for a war, why not make it a homeland for mutant kind? I thought on some levels this is what my father wanted. I was willing to sacrifice and make compromises to accomplish it._

_Part of the price I had to pay was watching my father get hauled off to Guantanamo Bay for his supposed war crimes. Charles Xavier promised to make sure he was taken care of. I decided to trust him because he did help save Pietro and he did prevent the militaries of the world from outright killing my father. He even exposed Hodge's plot and helped give our new nation on Genosha some legitimacy. I still didn't like the man, but I was willing to work with him if he could help me do what was best for our kind. Perhaps I put too much faith in him as well because like my father, he couldn't completely deliver._

_Xavier only ended up setting the stage for father's next plan, which not surprisingly he didn't share with me. This one turned out to be even more questionable than the uprising. The idea of using an asteroid to threaten humanity with mass extinction seems excessive even within circumstances we had to deal with. I honestly didn't think Magneto was going to let that rock hit. Then I saw him lose his mind to the power of that machine. It was not a pleasant sight. It showed that for all my father's vision, he still had a certain element of madness that made him no better than a tyrant._

_That was the worst realization of them all. It affirmed what I had started to fear since the uprising. My father's blind hatred was turning him into the very monster he was fighting against. It was no longer about following a vision for our kind. It was about vengeance. He was just going to do to the humans what they had been doing to each other for centuries. Yet somehow that was supposed to make mutants more superior? I could no longer blindly accept that. The mere fact he was willing to wipe out the entire human race with that asteroid is proof that this was no longer about humans and mutants. It was about hatred, plain and simple._

_In this sense I'm glad the X-men stopped him. He needed to be stopped for once. My father was walking a very dark path and something or someone needed to pull him back. Between the X-men and the presence of my half-sister, Lorna, we managed to keep him from such madness. This time I didn't do anything. I just watched as he was humbled in wake of his own madness. Lorna managed to do what I couldn't. She reached him. I was relieved, yet still somewhat disappointed in myself because I had done nothing. My only chance was to try and make up for it as we forged a new path on Genosha, hoping that my father had learned his lesson. Now I know that I was probably hoping for too much._

Wanda turned back and faced the throne. In her mind she could still see her father sitting there, gazing off into space with that stoic look in his eye that always had a touch of resentment. His hatred for humanity wasn't something he could forget. It was practically part of who he was. Even with Lorna in hid midst to reach that small sliver of humanity he still had in his heart, this hatred was never going to fade. Yet because this man was her father, she still trusted him in a way she shouldn't have. That wasn't just his fault. She bore a much larger share of that blame.

_For a while we had an opportunity to really take the mutant cause to another level. Thanks to the treaties we worked out with international authorities, we were our own sovereign state. We could have been the cornerstone for a new era of mutant prosperity. If only Magneto had taken advantage of these circumstances. But no…he had to look for another killing blow to the human race. _

_This time he would find it in an alien ship. I admit that possibility did not cross my mind at all when it came to using Genosha as a proving ground for mutants. I was aware of the island's mysterious history. When I found out that an alien ship played a part, I thought it was another one of Pietro's sick jokes. Then I saw the ship for myself and I got this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. _

_In a ways it made sense of a lot of things. It showed how men like Cameron Hodge could get the technology and know-how to create the sentinels. It also opened the door to some disturbing possibilities. What could my father do with that kind of technology? He was a very smart man who was very tech savvy for a man his age. I naively hoped that he would use it to make Genosha a more powerful country. Instead, he used it to fall back into old habits._

_His first stunt was something I actually went along with. He used some of the knowledge from that craft to make a machine that was going to turn Senator Kelly into a mutant. I thought this was a good plan because for one, it didn't involve killing anybody or starting a war. And secondly, it would give a man who has said some very nasty things about our kind a taste of empathy. It didn't exactly turn out as we planned, but it did turn Senator Kelly's son into a mutant and that did seem to make a difference. Senator Kelly is now president of the United States and he hasn't implemented those draconian anti-mutant laws he used to champion. I thought that this would be the end of my father's alien obsession, but the Kelly plot was just a test run for something much bigger._

_As usual, I was complacent. I busied myself by my part to keep the peace on Genosha with the Brotherhood. All the while, Magneto was studying and scheming. He claimed he was doing research on improving the condition for all mutants. He wouldn't go into details and I didn't expect him to. I thought if he did something extreme like the asteroid incident, I would be ready to act and so would Lorna. Nobody, not even Magneto himself, could have predicted how wrong it would go._

_The Cambrian essentially shattered whatever credibility my father had left in my eyes. Now he was the fool. In a ways he was a victim because he didn't understand what he was dealing with. I don't doubt that he believed this creature would benefit mutants, but to what end? It wasn't just about furthering evolution. It was about power and making sure he had more than the rest of the human race. Why else would he be so reckless in pursuing this thing?_

_He paid a price for his greed. We all paid a price. By unleashing the Cambrian, my father destroyed all the progress we made on Genosha. He turned the world against us. It wasn't the Cambrian that was the greatest monster. It was my father and the way this creature affected him. Lorna and Pietro believe that it was the creature, not the man that was behind that madness. I see it another way. I believe the Cambrian tapped into that hatred he still harbors for this world he can't resist destroying._

"Damn you, father…damn you and your obsessive hatred," Wanda cursed.

The young woman slammed her fist upon the arm of the throne, venting the pent up frustration that was finally boiling over. A few small hex sparks escaped her hand, a product of a chaotic mess that she was now responsible for cleaning up. It was an annoying act of irony. She held in her hands the power of chaos itself yet she was the one tasked with forging order out of the chaos her father left in wake of the Cambrian and the Warlock incident.

_After being consumed by that kind of madness, it's no wonder he became mentally unstable. It wasn't even all that surprising when he tried another crazy stunt with that Warlock device from the alien ship. He just can't let it go. He has to keep lashing out at this world. It doesn't even bother him that his own family gets caught in the crossfire. So long as it leads to the destruction of humanity, it's all fair game._

_For that reason, I could care less if my father returns from his impromptu exile. It's taken me too long to realize a painful truth. While my father's cause may be a good one, his tactics will only bring doom to us all. Mutant kind simply cannot afford to follow a man who is comfortable with paying so high a price. The shedding of so much blood will only embolden our human oppressors. That's why I will no longer be following my father's plans. I don't know where he ran off to or how long he'll be gone for, but I sincerely hope he has time to reflect on the mistakes he has made. Even if he accepts responsibility, he has lost the privilege of being the leader of this island and this cause._

_Now I shake off one burden and take on another. The first time I ruled this island, I did so with little desire to take my father's place. I was aimless and lost, full of doubt as to what path I would forge for our people. This time I have a plan. With help from Charles Xavier, we have a treaty that will put Genosha and the mutant race in a strong position. We have alien technology at our disposal and with it we can not just buy peace from the rest of the world, we can showcase mutant ingenuity and resolve. We can stand united as a country that is strong, resilient, and worthy of respect. _

_For too long our kind has tried to take respect by force. It's time we start earning it. Only then will we be able to assert ourselves against those who would oppress us. We won't just dominate with our powers. We will dominate with our will. I may not have my father's charisma, but I do have his resolve. I'm ready to lead our people into the future. Father had his chance and he failed us all. Now it's my turn._

Wanda swallowed the lingering emotions that had been choking her demeanor. The throne before her was no longer a relic of her father's burdens. She refused to allow his shadow to dominate over her and this land. She was the ruler of Genosha and the leader of the mutant cause. This throne was hers now.

With a new strength and an iron will, Wanda Maximoff took her place upon this seat of power. She sat down in the same place from which her father once formulated the plans that had caused them so much strife. It sent a brief shiver up her spine, knowing the kind of legacy she had to live down. That added pressure only served to motivate her. As the daughter of Magneto, the responsibility fell upon her shoulders to right her father's wrongs. It was a responsibility that she was ready to bear and one that she would not take lightly.

"It's over for you, father. Genosha is no longer in your hands. This is my vision now…my plan for our kind. If ever you wish to sit on this throne again, you'll have to fight me for it. Just know that if you try, the odds will always be in my favor."

* * *

**End of Supreme Reflections Volume 4**

**AN: Thank you all for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. Please remember to take the time to review. Any kind of feedback helps. X-men Supreme Volume 5 is coming up next. Please check out the official X-men Supreme website or my profile for news an updates. Until next time, take care and best wishes.**

**MarvelMaster616**


End file.
